Toni Meli has always lived in the spaces between?between people and pauses, between the person you are and the one you're still becoming. As a triplet, they learned early how closeness can stretch and shape you, how it teaches you to listen closely even when nothing is being said. At fourteen, Toni walked down a winding Pennsylvania road and into their first job at a winery?nervous, unsure, but willing. What began as a few hours among vines and barrels became years of steady work, quiet lessons, and unexpected growth. Now, at twenty-one, they help guide the heartbeat of that same place?managing the rhythm, holding the space for others, and noticing the beauty most people pass by. Writing, for Toni, is just another way of paying attention. A way to hold what's fleeting. A way to reach across the quiet and say: you're not alone. Closing the Distance is a piece of that journey?an offering from one life to another. A reminder that even in silence, something is being said. Even in distance, something is drawing us near. Toni is the founder of Held Together Publishing and continues to live and work in Pennsylvania, finding depth in the familiar and wonder in the in-between.