When Slippery was Cool

There was a time not that long ago, in a different place, where a large group of people used to write. We all got along. We opened up to each other. We shared things with each other that were close to our hearts. Some even shared things that they didn't even share with those near and dear to them in their own home. We wrote about our past, we wrote about our futures, we wrote about our dreams, our fears, our wants, our most painful experiences, the things that inspire us, and the things that put us in awe.
  Some of us were real writers. Those were the ones that had perfect grammar, post after post after post. Their sentences were perfect, they spelled correctly, they knew the correct way to use commas, parenthesis, and quotation marks. And some of those were even entertaining! Some of us, like myself, just pretended more than anything because it was still more appealing than jumping in the mice pace world. Some couldn't spell anything correctly even with the help of spell-check programs. Some shared stories of their lives that none of us would want to experience even if they could have their own life back after a brief visit. But we all wrote. We all shared. We all laughed with each other and we all cried together on a weekly basis... and this went on for almost four years.
  But when we wrote, we all accepted each other for who and what they were. We all read each others writings, good or bad, and we agreed or agreed to disagree. It was a great place, although it has changed so much since then that it might as well be gone. For all intensive purposes, it is gone. But what we got from it is still with many of us. And many of us still write elsewhere, but not all of us in the same place. Many of us still keep in contact. But that's not one of the reasons I'm here now.
  One of them, though, I really miss. She wrote poetry. And good poetry. She poured her heart out to us, telling her side of a failed marriage to an unfaithful spouse. She told us stories of her illness that she dealt with daily. An illness that had no cure, and one in which people don't "see" therefore the sympathy becomes lack-luster over time. She made us care about humanity. She used her words to make us see the wrong in our own world, and really want to make it right. She made us feel okay to be vulnerable. She made herself a teacher of wisdom to people she'll never meet. Her words had real power.
  She wrote about those that inspired her as a writer, and did them great honor with what she had to say. She wrote about her brilliant kids and the things they did that would make us laugh, and make us have a better sense of security in the youth of our society.
  She was the only one of us that could routinely set me back in my chair... blow me away with her words... her descriptions... her ideas... her epiphanies. She was brilliant, joyous, humorous, vulnerable, and determined. She was everything you would ever want in a best friend.
  I used to call her the Slippery Poet. And I miss her. And I miss her words.