​

The scroll was composed of diary entries written near my 18th birthday in 1988.

I read the pages with the initial expectation to have a motherly conversation with my 

younger self, and found something unexpected.  Among the deteriorating pages was a letter

written to me in the future. Adolescent Laurie had questions for her 40-something self,

words of hope and encouragement for the woman yet to emerge.

 

Teen Effigy 1988 is a peace offering, a destruction and a rebirth at once.

​

I put to rest distorted memories, a sorrow for lost innocence, and baptise myself

in a pure knowledge I may have possessed all along. Once the river ran dry,

I returned to collect remnants of the scroll and the spine of the notebook.

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