She sat in a chair with her back straight and her head hanging down
A young woman.
Though maybe not so young.
(Everyone seems so young to me on the days when my bones are aching and I am tired.)
She was pretty and delicate and had small hands with fingers that tangled and untangled themselves
As though they were keeping rhythm to a song inside her body and couldn't be still.

"How are you?" I asked.
Because I knew little else to ask but that.

"I'm doing okay" she answered.
She drew in a breath, with a tiny shiver, like a baby who is done crying and needs to sleep.
Her head lifted just enough for her eyes to meet mine.
For just a flash of a second, a nanosecond, a fraction of a blink of time,
A great well opened in the depths of her eyes, a window unshuttered,
And I could see in to a soul holding a candle of pain.

Quickly, the curtains were drawn tight. The chasm closed and all was still.
Her hands twitched and her breath drew in and held.
So brief was the moment, I might have missed it had I not been looking for her eyes.
But I had.

I felt a cracking in my chest, an opening up in my core, a small burst of flame and hot tears in my eyes; my soul coming forth.

I reached out to touch one of her small, dancing hands.
To let her know that I had seen and understood.
"Me, too," I said.
She looked to see if I was being truthful or fair
I knew that she knew.
"We see one another.  Your pain and mine."

Those of us that hold candles behind curtains drawn tight
See the light in others, brief but sure.
In all our hiding, in all our putting on our best faces and pretending that the pain is controlled or gone,
Our pain reflects itself back to us in eyes of others.
Like a window on a dark or rainy night.

I touched her because I wanted her to know that she was not alone.
And I wanted to be not alone.
To acknowledge that we are, so many of us, doing okay while not doing okay.
That candles of pain still are light that shines out to others.
That there is a place where light reaches - from you to me to all the young women with small and restless hands, moving forward, moving, coping, hanging on.