needles

let me read it to you…

I write because after the ride is over I will want to ride again, even though minutes ago I was making a deal with God to end it.

I want to write letters to my future self, reminding me not to take that left turn or kiss that guy in the front seat of his pickup truck.

I write because when I drop a pen onto the page, all the pins tumble into place and something is unlocked, a gift revealed.

I want to find out what’s in those dusty, crumbling boxes in the attic – the old photos, letters to lost lovers, the shoes worn at some wedding a long time ago.

I write because ordinary life is not really so ordinary and I want us all to finally agree about that, once and for all.

I want to show the world how a willow beginning to weep is worthy of beholding and I want the world to echo back a soft wow.

I write because a teacher once told my ten-year-old self that I ought to, that I was good at it – but maybe become a technical writer so I could also pay my rent and send my babies to college some day.

I want to write what is unsaid in the solitude of my life when there’s no one asking me questions. I write because I have questions and I need the answers to be nailed down, for the record.

I write because I’m fascinated by the needles weaving a single thread into a scarf or blanket or poem, fascinated by truth, a worm living deep in the mud under the dry grass I walk on every day.

Yes, let’s go digging for those worms and then offer them up to schools of perch off the end of the dock or the hopeless toad living in the window well.

I write because this old house needs an open window after a long, cold winter – the words floating in on the back of cut grass and the neighbor’s blooming lilac bushes.

I write because it makes me stop and take a breath, it yanks me out of naming what’s good and what’s bad and drops me into a small boat in the center of a calm lake.