Magic is real.

It’s coming out of the tip of a pen, bleeding onto paper.

Out of the tips of fingers when you punch the typewriter.

Magic is real, staining white with black, covering a page with words and ink and sounds.

Magic is real, worlds that flow like a river, the places that make you smile and laugh and cry.

Magic is the miracles that bounce around the heads of writers, until they can think of nothing else but getting their hands onto a pencil.

Magic has to be let out.

Filling pages of unheard voices, cries from far away.

Things that are better to be read than said out loud.

Magic is real.

It’s coming out of the tip of a pen, bleeding onto paper.

There is a moment in your life that's almost impossible to describe.

Before then, life is an endless maze of twists and turns, telling you to make decisions that you feel like you'll never know the answer to.

Suddenly, you fall.

You keep diving downward, flailing for anything to grab on to, but you feel nothing but the silk air around you.

You think that it will never end, that you're Alice falling down the rabbit hole, with nothing but your imagination to keep you company while you're

f

a

l

l

i

n

g.

Then-

Thud.

You close your eyes against the world, bracing for the pain of it all to come back.

But you find there's a swelling rising in your chest, spilling out of the top of your head.

You laugh until your sides hurt, giggling so much you are sure you're going to burst at the seams.

You smile so bright that it could turn into sunlight, filling up every horror, every piece of pain that you've endured and chasing it away.

You stand up straight and tall, brush the past off of your shoulders, and open your eyes.

The outside is a dark ocean blue. It's plain, with nothing but an indent of a flower drawn on the side. I run my hand down the spine, millions of possibilities running through my head. The notebook is safe, I tell myself. I can write anything inside, and no one could see it. At the same time, I could share any of this with the world. I open it, and the smell of a bookstore is welcoming. I had never received a gift as special as this, and it was all mine.

A grin blooms over my face, and I know that I love this notebook.

HE bought it for me, I remember, and the whole thought of it makes me all buttery inside. It was HIM who walked through a store one day, saw the notebook, and thought of me.