It feels good to have my notebook propped against my thighs again, my bare feet on the curved edge of the footstool. Yesterday I felt awkward, clumsy with the pen in my hand. Today it feels familiar, comforting, like finding an old sweater at the bottom of the drawer. I thought I’d given it to Revivals, I think, and pull it on against the chill of a late evening. It has been too long, it seems, too long since I felt like who I am inside it, the old friend who brings you back to center. It hasn’t been that many days since I’ve written, but the days have been long and full. Even when I wanted to write—and I wanted to, bringing my notebook out to the patio table in the mornings, moving it to the edge of the couch in the late afternoons thinking maybe I can write that evening—I didn’t find a place to fit it in. The days have been so busy it feels like months have passed instead of weeks. But I am writing now, and I realize I love the act of writing itself, moving the pen across the page. I like pausing, looking up in the middle of my dreamy thoughts. Two doves and one house finch in the big tray feeder, wary I might decide to stand up again at any moment (human that I am). Sable disappearing beneath the honeysuckle. I love the way writing makes me feel, as if putting words on the page is bringing me more fully into the world again, more a part of life in our courtyard garden. We have smog today. I can see it from where I sit, a thick veil across the mountains. I hear the noise of traffic, too. But there is the quiet pecking of the birds, the scratch of my pen, the soft sound my hand makes moving on the page. It feels good to be here writing, good to be back.