Untold stories

Perhaps one day I'll tell the story of the guy who came into my shop with a heart in his pocket. As I rang him up for a bottle of one of my favored Spanish reds I saw it's outline through the cloth of his pale buttoned up shirt and I couldn't hold back my curiosity. I pressed for details, asking him to quite literally place his heart on the table.

And he did. He displayed the paper heart with note attached and gave me the gift of a small but beautiful glimpse into his life.

It was a story that made me smile. At love. Specifically and uniquely his.

Tickled, I quickly went outside to share the story with friends. But my timing was off and the interest was not there. Though, to be honest, even more than that, I think it was because I was meant to savor the encounter alone. Sometimes a sacred thing gets diminished by sharing. Growing up in Hawaii and having my secret playgrounds become not so secret, I know this all too well. Conversely, sometimes something becomes more sacred when shared with others...but in this case it became evident that this was meant for me to keep.

After all, there may have been something lost in it's telling. Perhaps I wouldn't have done it justice, or it wouldn't have been well received in all of it's not so glorious glory. Because really, it was just a simple story... there were no lives saved in it's making, no grand conquests of triumph over tragedy, no earth shattering realizations. It was fluff. Like that lone cloud that sits in the sky, just a wisp in the air, not even capable of rain, and hardly big enough to take shape.

But sometimes fluff is that perfect distraction to direct your gaze up toward the heavens. To take in the expansiveness of the big blue sky that lies behind it.

And perhaps it is a story I will not tell. Perhaps I will let it be what it was- a passing moment. A flash of beauty. A glimpse within. For just as there is value in the telling, there is also a quiet beauty in all that goes unsaid.