Word Raccoon is furious with me.

First of all, her blue cashmere shawl, the one she just rediscovered, is in the freezer. She had been twirling in it like a Victorian heroine showing me the poetic little pinholes. I immediately took it from her, stuffed it into a bag, and slid it into the cold.

Her shocked face demanded an explanation.

Moths, I said. It has to stay there for three days.

For one glorious second she looked delighted at being a poet with moth-eaten clothing. Then she wailed because she wanted to wear it while she wrote.

And boy, did she write.

Before daylight this morning she grabbed the Freewrite she had begged me to plug in last night.

But the screen said the battery was low.

You had one job, she screeched.

I apologized, plugged it back in, made sure it was actually charging, and offered her my laptop.

No. First we need to talk, she said.

She had read yesterday’s blog post when she woke up, and she let me have it.

She informed me that I have had a leash on her for days to keep her in line. Then, apparently not satisfied with that, I also put a muzzle on her to keep her quiet. She said that in the last part of the blog post yesterday where I tried to let her was so obviously me pretending to be her that nobody would believe she wrote it.

I apologized again, handed her the laptop with a bow, brought her a mug of hot tea, and stepped aside.

She wrote. She snapped. She snarled. She wept.

She wriggled. She laughed.

She wrote. She wrote. And then she wrote some more.

My friends, that raccoon of mine wrote an entire chapbook in one morning.

All the words I had not let her say recently, all the feelings I had bottled like soda, she shook, exploding across the screen in poems.

Normally I do not give her full credit for the writing. But today truly belongs to her.

She wrote twenty-three poems. Twenty freaking three. These are not tiny poems. These are not wet-behind-the-ears poems. These are poems that need a comb through, but they are alive. They crackle. They spark.

They are full of electricity and endless longing, memory and theological side glances paired with domesticity and that sharp tang of truth.

They travel to Florence and Paris. They stand before art. They cook navy beans.

You know, just your average Saturday morning for WR.

And I think, no, I know I was wrong to muzzle her. She can be too much sometimes, yes. But trying to quiet her hurt more than just her. I’ve been feeling the loss, too. We keep forgetting what we know: the poetry always comes back.

It may leave for a bit, we don’t know, maybe to regroup, maybe to replenish, maybe it’s going to the hardware store, whatever, but it always comes back.

And we are always here.

Since I let her write today, it’s like my sight has sharpened, my senses heightened and all that jazz.

She reminded me that if you punch dough down in the bowl, it will just rise again. She doesn’t need to be silenced, not really. There’s a bread metaphor I’m reaching for, but damned if I can find it.

And now I want toast.