By Gina Mazza Hillier

There once was a time when I leapt and soared across wood-planked floors, rosen on the soles of my shoes to hold me steady, aplomb evident in the graceful lift of my chin and slant of my wrist. One solitary oboe note could set me aloft, spinning and swirling like a dervish, happy in my eloquence, not caring what the world outside me thought of such a fevered display. I've felt that passion, I know its presence, and I want it back. I want to be the unabashedly expressive artist I once was in my limber years.

These days, my artistry presents itself in words, words, words. There is charm and poise in expressions finely crafted. Language has the courage to lift many chins, convince many smiles, fill up countless hearts and bring to overflow the senses of sight, touch, sound. Letters strung together can bring us awake and bear quiet witness to our victories and failings, our anguish and our languor, laid straight out on paper for anyone whose eyes find it and have wont of its familiar significance.

I can do this, I can lay down power with my pen like the jet stream rolls a windstorm across the Great Plains, like the Northern Lights splay incandescence upon winter-frigid Canadian wilderness. What’s more, I want to do this. I crave the sensation that I create right here, right now. One word leads to another and another and life takes shape on sheets of white. Ah, it hints of sensuality and, yep, there goes my heart pressing outward against my chest once again. I am, quite simply, in love with this feeling, the same feeling that brings me to the blank page day after day.