John Jeffries had his birthday last week. It was kind of depressing. He had a few of his friends there. They ate cake. He opened the few presents set on the table when people walked in. There was some money in a few of the cards. But John was missing something. Two days before his birthday he had sat down to write a love letter. He could think of so many lovely things to write. There were so many beautiful words of romance and love, all those words that come from the heartache in the absence of someone you love. He probably could have started a novel. But when he gripped the pen to stroke his first letter he could not. You can’t force a love letter. And then he realized, maybe he was no longer in love. Maybe he was caught in a place of comfort, where it was nice to say he had this thing with this girl, but that he’d been so removed that it wasn’t really there, that when he thought to write a love letter, it wasn’t a lack of words, it wasn’t a lack of pretty sentences that would probably make any girl blush and feel warm, it was a lack of passion. It was a lack of emotion, almost like his heart wasn’t reacting to what his brain had to say, it just shrugged its shoulders and mumbled “whatever.” And then his pen only became the pen that almost wrote a love letter. So on his Birthday it was only right that it was gloomy outside. The wind slightly blowing the trees, everything tinted black and white, color lost in the absence of the sun. He enjoyed his friends, he knew they loved him, cared about him, and he felt such comfort. But inside he was misunderstood, lost in a forgotten feeling.