Writing From Joy

and summer little-joys like tomatoes, corn, and stillness.

I am not well versed in writing from a place of joy. I am good at bleeding, on pages and otherwise. I once wrote a poem titled “I Don’t Write Love Songs” and I didn’t…

Until now.

It’s not that I can’t write from a place of joy, or that I am joyless. Even the parts and chapters of my life that had less still had some.

But writing about the messy shit, the hard parts, the bloody bits came faster, easier and generally with a sense of catharsis I couldn’t otherwise access. While I know that I am not alone in this, I would be lying if I said that it doesn’t feel better-

More expansive, softer. I feel like a better writer, being able to shine instead of only bleed. When I am writing from a place of joy, about joy or love and/or being in it, I am reveling. I am reveling and reliving his smile or my kids’ laughter, or the way I felt holding produce grown by friends and preparing to feed my family with it.

I think it’s important, the sharing of what is real and true, despite it’s ugliness but I think it’s just as brave, especially now in this late-stage, capitalistic hellscape, to turn your face to the sun and let people experience your shine.

There is much to fret over these days, pick your poison, and I do. But there have been things I laughed hard at, like discovering that Anaya will sometimes eat tuna, straight from the tin, no additives, no nothing while sitting at his desk, too busy to do otherwise. Or watching Maddox, my youngest, do that too-familiar toddler dance of bouncing up and down, the occasional foot stomp that is never on cue but always the answer and that I will never get enough of. Hot pour-over by a morning campfire with nowhere to be and nothing but time. Tiny moments where you think to yourself, “I remember when this is what I wanted.”

And then there is corn (and tomatoes, and peaches) but specifically and today, there is corn, which happens to be a summer little-joy of mine (so long as it’s removed from the cob, I know, I know) straight from the farmers market. Few things pull at my creative kitchen-brain the way summer produce does. While I am still not over tomatoes yet, I am excited to temporarily shift focus to corn, starting with corn chowder.