Featured Guest Writer Amy Appel from her piece in Bewilderness Writing based on the poem “Why I Write Poetry” by Major Jackson.

She comes, alongside the others in my adult ballet class, to claim her place at the barre. Our “barre” is a padded folding chair on the linoleum floor of the church’s fellowship hall.

We all find our preferred modes of expression, from tattoos to topiary artists. While they may seem totally different from the outside, they share a most important end result for me: the ability to communicate both with myself and with the outside world.

I crave the kind of solitude that can only be found in the quiet that invites my thoughts to marinate and my nervous system to ratchet down a few notches.

My first workshop outside our weekly writing groups will be about polishing our prose into poetry.

Welcome inside my very own curiosity cabinet filled with the artifacts of me, all with the intention to explain who I am.