February First Reads Novels & Stories

She looked at the cover. It was not the same kind of notebook as the four. The four were formal — organized, with the specific quality of documents that knew they were documents. This was smaller. A personal notebook, the kind you carried with you, the kind you used when the thinking needed to happen before you knew what the thinking was. She opened it. The first entry was dated February. Not a specific year — just February. She understood from the archive's context that this was the February of the arrival. She read: