My hand trembles as I grasp the back of its frayed cover and frantically flip through it’s pages.

I stop when I see the water droplets on my skin have mixed in with fresh ink, making smudges, the mixture’s tar black color seeping into the bed of my fingernails.

I bite my lip to keep myself from yelling out in frustration as I angrily huck the journal into a nearby tree.

I ruined it. I smeared the confession into total illegibility.

“Berlyn?” I hear a voice callout from behind me.

I freeze into place. I want to shout and cry and say it isn’t what it looks like. It isn’t what it looks like.

“What are y-“ the voice pauses.

But in the realm of the living, it continued.