All diaries are a plumed, hair-shirted thing,
Their keeper both a jailer and his charge;
Yet there are those — canaries born to sing —
Who rail within a cage, escape writ large
Upon the notes of joy and hurt that slip
Between the bars of their imagined pain.
And yet, the words themselves supply the whip:
Who seeks to see himself, seeks all in vain.
‘A diary means yes indeed.’ — Gertrude Stein