Day 24 is something that makes me cry.

I don’t see crying as a negative thing, nor as a sign of weakness. However, I don’t usually admit to my own tears to the public at large – tough guy image and whatnot.

But, truth is, there is one thing that often gets me misty-eyed, though rarely outright crying.

Music.

Not sad music. Just music.

The kind of music that reaches in and seizes your heart, squeezes the air from your lungs, twists in your gut like a wicker basket of serpents. Music that makes you feel, brow to toe, marrow to fingernails. Music that, in some way, tells a story so close to your own that you live in it, images and emotions swirling around you. Lyrics so poignant that you cannot deny them; melodies so intense that no amount of armor will keep them from cracking open your rib cage.

Music that, for as long as it plays, expresses your soul and its existence outloud.