Dear Kudzu:

I miss you today. I always miss you on bad days. And lonely days. And days like today that are just restless with some sort of frustrating energy that beats you all day long until you want to turn on it and demand what exactly it wants from you.

I saw your sister Mischief over the weekend, and I petted her with my eyes closed and pretended for just a moment that it was you. That was sort of a mistake because it made me twice as sad when I opened my eyes.

Big things seem to be on the horizon. I'm not sure what they are, but I can feel them looming ahead, shadowy and indistinct. Whether these specters of the future are friends or foes, I can't say. And right now, I think of them like The Knockers. Which reminds me - be glad you weren't here for Dillon's recent proclamation that "The Darkness lives in the birdhouse" in our bathroom. I'm guessing it moved in after you died.

Even though this is a letter, the kind you would expect to be filled with updates on every detail of life, I'm not going to update you on anything vexing because I know you wouldn't ask me to recount how I don't quite really totally completely live in my house yet. Or the state of my love life, which is questionable...like something you aren't sure whether or not it's gone bad. If you were here, I'd hold out my love life and say, "Smell this" and gauge your reaction. And if you made that face you used to make when you forgot that you hated the smell of toothpaste, I'd scrap it and declare my celibacy forever.

I can feel myself doing stupid things right now - things that don't make any logical sense. Things that I know I'm going to wish I had stopped - like when you know you shouldn't eat any more but you do and then you sit in miserable bloated pain for an hour. I'm going to be in miserable bloated emotional pain before all this is through, and it would be so much more manageable if you were here.

I hope you are well, growing fat on the green tips of spider plants and watching over your me.

Love,
Ashley