In expression of regret, of pain, he sat at the desk in his head. A beautiful, roll-top affair he’d have been embarrassed to own had it been real.

Smooth paper, the pen like an extension of his arm and it dragged ink across the unblemished white with the slickness of a pond-skimmer. Trails of a deep and constant black, sentences never finished and paper discarded.

Thousands of words, started and finished as he tried to realize the truth of her. Finally, it comes like a haiku, a single-barrel bourbon or even the cliche strike of lightning: fine and burning bright the lines on the page like road flares and hazard lights.

“I loved you because I never had to explain to you why, as a grown man, I am still afraid of the dark.”