To speak is to articulate. Give voice to. Verbalize. Address. Enlighten. Explain. Describe. Account for. To lay down words is to lay down a bridge.  It starts with a gap.  A gap between civilians and service members.  Between veterans and their loved ones.  Between the literary world and the military.  Between academic theories and boots on the ground. Between those who have a voice and those who do not.  A gap between a list of casualities and the baby who is crying for a father who will never come home.  What are the gaps you want to cross? Speak.  Lay down your words like planks and let us begin to bridge that gap.

To witness is to be an onlooker, a bystander, a spectator, an observer. To perceive, behold, see.  But to witness is also to show, confirm, demonstrate, bear out, to testify. To witness is to cross the bridge. Let our writers bear witness. Let our readers bear witness. Let words be conduits to personal connections. Let us forgo statistics and reports and rhetoric. See the human beings: the service members, civilians on the homefront and in war-torn countries, refugees, prisoners of war, the missing and the dead.  See the comforts they forfeit: Untroubled  sleep. Food in a pantry. Belief that the car alongside theirs will not explode. Closeness of family. Let us be linked in the act of witness.

To heal is to mend, make well, alleviate, restore, repair, reconcile, rebuild. To merge and reunite. Join, fix, tie. It is to bridge the gap and find someone we love on the other side: Our spouse. Our father. Our best friend.  A stranger. A mother who misses her children. The baby who is still crying for a father who will never return. Let words move us from isolation to connection.  Let us all be tied together in understanding, empathy, and awareness. Let us heal by speaking, by witnessing, by bridging the gaps between us and everything we don’t know.