The thick crust of silent snow has melted; dead quiet winter has yielded to the burst of new leaves and the jolting rush of fast water. Within the layers of the terrible sorrow I carry in me always, another feeling shoots through. It is the first melting trickle of long-frozen snow. Pulsing down the mountainside, the water speaks, the chambers of my heart speak. I am alive, the bubbling stream says. I made it. A song of triumph is filling me, pushing its way out of my heart, out through my mouth to the sky up above and the valley below. “I release you!” I shout to that old sorrow. “I release
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