There truly are some things money just cannot buy. Ecstasy, like a four-year-old child's when she gets to play, wildly, loudly, with abandon--this has no price. How she closes her eyes, frames her face, and takes a deep breath standing in a slash of sunlight--this laces itself through my memories...this holds when other things break, clatter to the ground, or fall apart. I am in love with this spirit of joy and work every single day to revel in the little things that give me pleasure.

As predicted, a poem visited me late after I'd already doused the lights and tucked into bed--hungry for sleep. I found myself plodding down the stairs into the kitchen, weary but excited with my mad crush on words...a blanket on my lap, a dog snoring at my side, I opened my notebook sideways and let the images tumble out. Something about the night, about the possessed way this writing came meant that I couldn't dream of writing upright--of writing logically. No, this was poetry and I'd all but provoked her to come and shake me awake.

This morning, I woke with a smile on my face like I'd had some wild affair in the darkest hours--which, in many ways I guess I did. An affair with my own raw mind, a passion to finally tell the truth, which only seems to filter through me in poetry. These poems will not buy me a loaf of bread, but they fed me nonetheless. They may never show themselves beyond the confines of my notebook, but they've revealed what they needed to about that wildness inside of me. I was able to play, to stand in a fragment of moonlight on the kitchen floor, to breathe, and to run my pen across the page, mapping my own hard-earned delight.