Dear Wigleaf,

Where do bats go in winter? I'm writing from my new backyard, the packed soil cold and solid beneath me, gazing up at the naked trees where in summer, the bats welcomed me. I've never appreciated all the different browns of bark before living here.

I cried on the bathroom floor yesterday because I am a cliché, tired of being so many other selves but my self. A mother's refrain.

One of the trees out here is tall and crooked in the middle, lurching precariously over our neighbor's fence. When the March wind howls, the entire thing, root to branch, sways threateningly. I marvel at how far it can bend, at how storms have a way of animating every atom around us with danger: potential.

And where, I ask you, do bats go when June's infinite twilight has darkened into the distant cozy gleam of autumn, into the shadows that stretch into the bleak flatness of winter?

Sometimes, I confess, I hear a scratch or a shuffling when I'm alone in the house, and instead of fear, my familiar friend, I feel comfort. Bat or ghost or mouse, I don't mind. I like knowing I'm not alone—knowing that once the green blooms and the lightning bugs glow and the bats are back stumbling their way through the night, I will be, too. Alive with the energy of all the storms that didn't break us.

Happy spring,

Christine