I waved hello to the girl standing at the end of the trailer. Though the trailer had probably seen its last tenant, the little girl would grow up to touch thousands of people. She didn’t understand that the voice in her head was incapable of silence. As happens in so many similar places, the cauldron’s circumstance made it difficult for her to talk above a whisper. She would leave the place. Such places and the people who inhabit them touch us deeply and rob us of our ability to flourish.

I waved again, though decades of intervening history lie like a chasm between us.

Because no good act goes unheard in a just world, my small voice and gesture caught her attention. Time became diaphanous.

She looked up inquisitively. I felt her as she saw me wave.

Impossibly, she began to shout. The silence was no longer her prison.