write
not because you can
but because you can't not:
because the words
grind holes in your soul
finding ways to get out
especially if
you don't want them to

your grocery lists will rhyme
and your thank-you notes
sound like poetry
and you will hear—
cadences—
coming from your brain,
incessant,
in the silences between
the beats of your heart

write
because a controlled release
forestalls the explosion
that your creativity foretells

write
because the composition of phrase
makes it plausible
that order can be drawn
from your chaos

write

Behind the normalcy of every home lie the quirks, the secrets, the idiosyncracies: the small things that add personality and character (some would say oddness) to each household. Every household has its own taboos, its requirements of family members, and they're impossible to discern from the exterior behavior of the occupants.

We head for home in approximately ten hours. I have been here since one a.m. on Saturday morning, and I've come away with the same feeling that I always have when I visit here: Tull is my home in a way that no place else can ever be, but the chances of my ever living here again are very, very small.

I am thankful for kitty purrs and coconut-milk desserts and dinners with friends. I still love the feeling of driving over the I-55 bridge over the Mississippi River, and I still am secretly thrilled when Jeff approves of something that I do. I still can't remember the name of all the reindeer without singing them, and I think it's funny that this year is the first year, ever, that my father has put Christmas lights on his house.

I was thirteen on the day that my parents heard the sounds coming from the woodpile. At first, they weren't sure what they were hearing, but after a day or two, they became certain that what they were hearing was probably a kitten.

Somewhere along the line, a few years ago, the tax base in Tull got stout enough and the houses got paid-for enough that it became time to have some official representation of law and order in this town. In the past, the isolation of the town pretty much guaranteed that just about any would-be criminal would get good and lost before ever reaching the city limits, but every now and then a bad wind blew long and hard enough to throw a not-quite-desirable someone down the winding road that eventually led to Tull.