the shape of our continent

If you click on the picture, you can see it a little better (I still have a long way to go in understanding light-dark balances), but instead of picking a more clear picture, this one, for my town, makes more sense--not only is there that sort of heavenly ray, looking down on us, protecting our humble town, but you can also see Wisconsin.

I grew up in Tennessee. I spent so much of my beginning there: learning the shape of low slung mountains, enjoying the scent of dogwood, counting the ways kudzu could climb a forest. I said "y'all" naturally, and loved the way everything slowed down.

Moving to Wisconsin was the most adventurous and horrifying things I'd ever done. I didn't have a choice in the matter, true, but I think it was things like your friendship that kept me from agreeing wholeheartedly with a family falling part: yes, let's find a way to go back. Without this new love, there would be little to grasp in the land of cornfields and lowing cows.

There was a quiet period in our friendship in high school, but we both needed to be someone else, and I don't think we were to grow together then. When we came out of it, only slightly scathed, you were the first person I told my deepest high school secret to. Something that is still a secret in some circles. You were the first person I wanted to know, officially, and I loved you for that, over coffee and looking at the curved window of Country Kitchen.

(Remember that place? We don't have one in town, and I haven't seen one, or many, in Minnesota. Not an unfortunate thing, indeed.)

Here we are, somehow settled in the same state, only an hour and a half apart, which is so lucky. I could stomp my feet and wish we were closer, but even when we lived six blocks from each other, we didn't see each other enough. It's the nature of busy daily lives. And it's the nature of a friendship that would still stretch across a continent, would survive if your twelve at night was my noontime. That's just how we are.