About Hope
Thoughts and Poems in the Third Person (a zine)
1 -
She suddenly found herself chasing the butterfly through the field. Like the butterfly, a thought flittered past her mind, ‘This is silly, I’m 45 years old, I shouldn’t be chasing a butterfly, running through tall grasses’. But she kept going anyway. She was breathless, she didn’t know where the butterfly was taking her, but she kept going anyway. Its erratic flight pattern, left and right, high and low, kept it just out of her reach. But she kept going anyway. And then, she laughed out loud as her arms were stretched out before her, reaching into the air. She realized it wasn’t the butterfly she was reaching for; the butterfly was gone. Her eyes filled with tears and she laughed, still. Dropping to her knees, she knew what she was chasing. She knew what she was reaching for. It was hope.
It was hope all along.
2 -
It wasn’t her smile.
It wasn’t her clothing
or jewelry.
It wasn’t her body or hair
or her posture or kind words.
It was her relentless pursuit
of hope that made her
the most beautiful person
in the room.
3 -
Yes, she was changed.
Like this pebble smoothed from tumbling miles and miles
down the river,
she’d lost the rough edges
of her hopelessness.
It was smooth now.
Her heart was smooth, now.
4 -
She stacked her hopes up,
like tidy little stacks of pennies,
and they stayed,
just like that,
in tidy little stacks,
unmoved and sturdy.
5 -
Her story was hard. It was relentless. She didn’t know the end. She didn’t have a pretty bow to tie it up in. She wasn’t sure what the next day would bring. But she kept moving forward. She kept putting one foot in front of the other. And she kept smiling, and wrestling, and praising, and questioning, and crying and worshipping, and burying her fears in truth and bringing her fears to light. She had moments of victory and moments of defeat. But she hoped. She always had hope. And even when her hope felt small, it was big enough for others who were following her story. And they hoped. For her story and for theirs. She didn’t know the end of her story, but she knew where she’d be in the end.
