Dear Wigleaf,

Well, I'm here in Iowa again. I always seem to be here in the early spring, when it's cold and gray, mostly, and the landscape is stark. Seven years ago, I wrote to you when my brother was dying and I was on the road home trying to get there in time to tell him goodbye. I keep liking this place more, Wigleaf. Every time I come back I feel less like an outsider. Shouldn't it work the other way? Sure, there's a "Fuck Biden" billboard and all the food has cream of mushroom soup in it like it's a law or something. Sure, the wind cuts you in half and the coffee's weak. But there's also the welcome stillness when you drive out into the country. And the rolling filmstrip of bare fields, of black earth tilled and awakened. It's not so much sentimentality as it is the sweet, comfortable ache of being close to things you remember in your bones. This place changes me every time. It loosens me up, unclenches my jaw. After a few days my accent will go Midwestern again. I'll drop final consonants. I'll drink too much, eat too much. I'll tell and be told all the old stories again. And I'll be happy.

Yours,
Kathy