It’s what you’ll do in sweltering summer heats and epic blizzards.

It sits next to you in medical waiting rooms with his wife, knowing that while he’s blind the woman next to him is all he sees.

It finds you. While it might not be yours, it senses you’ll understand. And you do.

You’ll clean out your closet. Your basement. Dead wight. Your life. When it tells you it can’t breathe.

It consistently surprises, holds you down and kisses you. Thanks you for merely being and giving it a place to feel safe.

On a Wednesday afternoon, it comes tearing in from the backyard, does a lap on the sofa, yanks your Mac power cord out and dashes right out the back door.

It holds you hostage – delightfully so – until you feed it. Pages in a story, notes from life and words that won’t let you go until they rest on your page. Hungry for a page to call home.

When it’s silent, it’s asking you to be silent as well and help it find the right words.

It’ll fight you when you ignore it and look for the easy way out and despises being made to feel mediocre.

But it never cries. It laughs. Sometimes it screams when you choose to ignore it.

(It occasionally holds your head in the toilet, but that’s really more of a retching sound.)

Most importantly, it belongs with you. And if you can’t see it by your side, stop.

Turn around.

Figure out where you left it.

And go get that shit. Pronto.

***

What does YOURS do?