Maybe I do love writing like I’d love a sister who could set my teeth clenching like no other, whose icky tone of voice would mirror mine, who might not speak her judgment out loud but the phone would be alive with it, her pause electric. Maybe I do love writing like an old friend who knows my history, my dark places, my ugliness, who loves me anyway. Maybe I do love writing because it provides this sibling comfort, holds up home to me. Maybe I do love writing because it has so much room in it, because it points me to places I don’t want to go and brings me out on the other side, different. Maybe I do love writing because it tethers me to the planet and sends me marching among the stars. It works my muscles, stretches my cells, makes room inside me like yoga practice opens up my body. It twirls me, spirals me, eats me, spits me out half-chewed, kisses the bruises it caused, makes it all better. Maybe I do love writing because it sings me like the sparrows in the hedge, like the grand piano on the open deck of a slow barge, like the first star in the evening sky who gets our wish.
Maybe I love writing because it carries me, fills me, dumps me upside down in the muddy water, sinks me like a stone, lifts me like a bubble, crashes through me like a sonic boom. Maybe I love writing like I love an earthquake, or like a long, rolling orgasm or sweaty sex, because it is sweet, connected, messy release. Maybe I love writing because it makes me who I am at my core, because it rocks me, because it digs me out from beneath the avalanche unscathed. I love writing because I am a baseball being hit out of the park, or met in a soft well-used leather mitt, cradled, held, honed, happy. I love writing because there is nowhere it can’t take me if I let it, because it lets me speak when my mouth is full of gravel, when the mud sticks to my throat, when grief squeezes me shut. I love writing because I carry it with me wherever I go, breathe it in when I am walking, stroke it with my arm that arches out of the water when I swim, brush it with my broom that sweeps the kitchen tile. I love writing because it is always with me, because I am never alone. I love writing because it is my lifeline to myself, to you, to the universe always in motion. I love writing because it spins me, weaves me, pulls my threads tight, makes me whole cloth, keeps me warm, awake, true. I love writing because it makes me never want to stop moving the pen across the page, makes me never want to stop tasting and touching, breathing sound, drinking air, makes me never want to end.
Maybe I do love writing, after all.
No Holds Barred 
Indeed true….