My father's viola.It is a forest. It is a living tree. It is the heartwood of our family. My father's viola is over to hundred years old, even older than Germany. It is the color of well-done pastry, shining like apricot glaze.

They took my voice," I told her. " I have nothing to sing for.""No. No. That isn't true. Don't let them have that victory. Don't you dare!

I had the happiest life imaginable. We lived in music. We buttered our bread with it. Music walked in the door with Papa or Maria like another member of the family.

I play viola... but I'm really a singer.""That's not really what you are," she says frankly.Her directness startles me. "What do you mean?"It maybe what you do. But even a voice can be taken from you.

It's amazing whey you think about it, isn't it? Even though all we've lost, somehow we keep living. You choose to keep playing with your twisted fingers. I choose to keep playing my papa's viola. Lev-- he chooses to keep praying. We just all have to do it broken.

The limbs of a stand of birch tree hold up the forest's form like women's bones. This grove has a magnetic pull, beckoning toward a carpet of blue-green mosses where I long to lie on my back and sing into the leaves. But it is a place where bodies were stacked, and I don't want to make friends with trees that once hid the dead.