Sometimes, we want to write the stories of our hearts with invisible ink. Those things we long to relieve ourselves of, the stories that reveal too much, they are the ones we want to write the most, but fear the greatest. Little bits of those hidden stories creep into our published works and we cringe. Did anyone notice? Did anyone see that secret theme of me that I tried desperately to conceal? The pen is wild in our fingers, rushing ahead of us, exposing the weaknesses, the fears, the confessions we have buried deep. The ink seeks to reveal us as we really are, and the battle is neverending.

But for the endless stories we don't want to write about ourselves, there are stories we don't want to write about others, as well. Yet, we find ourselves here, feeling unknown pains and joys of people we don't know, unable to stay away. Strangers we see on the street, their faces haunt us until we create the story of them.

Like you.

"I can't do this," you whisper into your wife's hair. You bury your face in her neck, and breathe her in. That scent, so perfect, so her, hints at desert wind and eucalyptus, and you ache at the sensation. You can't imagine how to breathe air that has no taste of her. You can't, but you will. That's what they've told you- hold her now, they said. It won't be long.

Do you know how much I don't want to write that story? And yet, here I am, helpless to avoid the pain you're experiencing, dreading the temporary ache that comes from your permanent condition. But I will stay. You deserve that.

Words, they are such a faint echo of the living. We cannot begin to match the truth of experience with such a simple thing as a pen.

It is a meager gift I give, I know, but it is yours. It is my prayer that in some small way, the telling of it will help ease the living of it.