When two violins are placed in a room, if a note on one violin is struck, the other violin will sound the note. If this is your definition of hope, this is for you.

For the ones who know how powerful we are, who know we can sound the music in the people around us simply by playing our own strings. For the ones who sing life into broken wings, open their chests and offer their breath as wind on a still day when nothing seems to be moving spare those intent on proving that God is dead. For you when your fingers are red from clutching your heart so it will beat faster. For the time when you mastered the art of giving yourself away for the sake of someone else. For the ones who have felt what it is to crush the lies and lift truth so high the steeples bow to the sky, this is for you.

This is also for the people who wake early to watch flowers bloom, who notice the moon at noon on a day when the world has slapped them in the face with its lack of light. For the mothers who feed their children first and thirst for nothing when they’re full. This is for women, and for the men who taught me only women bleed with the moon, but there are men who cry when women bleed, men who bleed from womens’ wounds. And this is for that moon, on the night when she seems hung by a noose, for the people who cut her loose, and for the people still waiting for the rope to burn, about to learn they have scissors in their hands. This is for the man who showed me the hardest thing about having nothing is having nothing to give, who said the only reason to live is to give ourselves away. So this is for the day we’ll quit our jobs and work for something real, we’ll feel for sunshine in the shadows, look for sunrays in the shade. This is for the people who rattled the cage that slave wage built, and for the ones who didn’t know the filth until tonight, but right now are beginning songs that sound something like people turning their porchlights on and calling the homeless back home.

This is for all the shit we own, and for the day we’ll learn how much we have when we learn to give that shit away.

This is for doubt becoming faith, for falling from grace and climbing back up, for trading our silver platter for something that matters, like the gold that shines from our hands when we hold each other. This is for your grandmother, who walked a thousand miles on broken glass to find that single patch of grass to plant a family tree where the fruit would grow to laugh. For the ones who know the math of war has always been subtraction, so they live like an action of addition. For you, when you give like every star is wishing on you, and for the people still wishing on stars, this is for you too. This is for the time you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to. For the time you taught a fourteen-year-old girl she was powerful, for the time you ttaught a fourteen-year-old boy he was beautiful. For the radical anarchist asking a Republican to dance, ‘cause what’s the chance of anyone moving from right to left if the only moves they see are NBC and CBS?

This is for no becoming yes, for scars becoming breath, for fear becoming trust, for saying ‘I love you’ to people who will never say it to us, for scraping away the rust and remembering how to shine, for the dime you gave away when you didn’t have a penny. For the many beautiful things we do, for every song we’ve ever sung, for refusing to believe in miracles because miracles are the impossible coming true and everything is possible. This is for the possibility that guides us, and for the possibilities still waiting to sing and spread their wings inside us, ‘cause tonight Saturn is on his knees proposing with all of his ten-thousand rings that whatever song we’ve been singing, we sing even more. The world needs us right now more than it ever has before. Pull all your strings, play every chord. If you’re writing letters to the prisoners, start tearing down the bars, if you’re handing out flashlights in the dark, start handing out stars. Never go a second hushing the percussion of your heart. Play loud, play like you know the clouds have left too many people cold and broken and you’re their last chance for sun. Play like there’s no time for hoping brighter days will come. Play like the apocalypse is only four, three, two, but you have a drum in your chest that could save us, you have a song like a breath that could raise us like the sunrise into a dark sky that cries to be blue. Play like you know we won’t survive if you don’t, but we will if you do. Play like Saturn is on his knees, proposing with all of his ten-thousand rings that we give every single breath. This is for saying yes, this is for saying yes.