There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Maya Angelou

Imagine, if you will, that these pages are a book. Not just any book, but a diary. Its leather binding is now dark from where my hand has held it open to revisit entries, to add details, and to catch tears that didn’t fall when I committed those words to paper. Among its pages you will find doodles and pictures tucked in for safe-keeping, song lyrics and poems that have inspired me, and ideas — those elusive visits from the Muses that strike at the least expected times but demand quick capture lest they be lost forever. The binding is loose and the edges are ragged. When you pick it up and turn it over in your hands, you will feel its warmth, which is very strange at first. If you close your eyes and hold it lightly in your palms, you can feel it pulsing. Breathing and beating to its own sacred, secret rhythm. Do you feel that? Take a deep breath and focus on the diary.

You’re holding my heart.

Now, you might be concerned, and you might want to put this down. I invite you to keep it, to hold it, to get used to the feel of it. I ask that you really don’t worry about dropping it, or stepping on it, or even holding it too tightly; my amazing heart has survived worse. It’s been dropped, broken, mended, stepped on, even stomped on. Once, I even sliced off the piece that belonged to a lover who didn’t deserve it, and I baked it into the most delicious meatloaf, which he quite enjoyed for dinner that night. And that didn’t hurt nearly as much as seeing all the beauty in the world. Or holding my nephew on the day he was born. Or watching my flowers struggle up through the cold ground to feel the sunshine on that first spring afternoon.

I share all of this with you so you have fair warning. You ventured here, and you picked up the book. Before you can put it back down again, it wants something from you. It wants you to stay awhile. Visit. Wander through these pages and meet the ghosts that haunt, the dying that breathe last breaths, and the love that lingers long after it should. Make yourself comfortable. And don’t be afraid if you feel the prick of teeth or claws; nothing really bites around here. At least, not hard enough to draw blood.