Hope is a brief scatter of diamonds

Listen to me read this here:

Hello friend. I can see you are despondent. Please, come this way. I want to show you something. Stand here. A little closer. Turn your head just so, look to the right out this small window.

See the branches of the tattered bush, the one I almost had my husband assassinate before my innate softness prevailed? Yes, that scrubby thing, naked as all the deciduous, rooted ones in New England February.

Freezing rain—oh, miracles!—has swept in with a fairy hand, cast a net of icy water, rendered the small bush beaded, bejeweled. Isn’t it lovely?

If this is the end of what we think we know, it must also be a start somewhere, and friend , every beginning has a seed or two tucked into the folds of it where few know how to look.

Let me teach you this—to hunt for those little ovules of possibility, forage for spores beneath the damp bark. Take my hand and let’s go foresting. We’ll glide along the needled path with open eyes, brighthearts, gaping like 6-year-olds at all the shiny magic there.

–Melinda