Into the Tangle of Friendship (at Zumba)

I returned to the gym today with a more functional toe and with the energy I always have when finding my way back to something that I love. My friends were there—yes, I will call them my friends—and we took that one side of the Zumba room that we've come to think of as ours, and we danced—Brenda leading the way. It doesn't matter what I look like when I dance Zumba. No one in that room stands as judge. No woman has to wait for a man to say, Will you dance with me?

When it was over, one of my Zumba friends mentioned that she'd been reading Into the Tangle of Friendship, my second book, a memoir, published what seems years ago. She spoke of the book as if it had just been written yesterday, as if it were brand new, and in that way she gave it back to me. Driving home, I felt enormous melancholy—for the books I've written, for the books I haven't written, for the words I haven't found yet.