The Keeper of Stories

©

"I am not the keeper of secrets. I am the keeper of stories.

Some are etched so deep into the mind’s crevices that it takes a co-author to find the light again. I sit with the rich, the poor, the titled, and the lost. Their status vanishes; only the ink remains.

I see the halves they carry and help them craft a whole. Sometimes their pages are scribbled upon—unidentifiable, erased by the travel and the toss of life. But then comes the toil: the physical, emotional, and spiritual labor of a new birth.

Alas! The truest work begins. We bind the pages. We craft the ink. We conjure titles for chapters yet unwritten. Here, writer’s block has no home. The shame that once strangled their truth is cast aside like an old, worn hat.

Look! They are writing. The midnight oil burns bright. We are found together—weeping, laughing—at the sight of what is being born. I have become the keeper of what was, and the witness to what will never be again."