On Burnside Writers: Hope, the Foolish Child

I was published for a second time on Burnside Writer's Collective, which is an honor, to be sure. This prose piece still moves me as much to read it as it did to write it, with shivers and chills and ringing truth of it all. It feels some days that Hope is nearly about to kill me. But somehow it proves true. So I commit today, as I try to do each day, to choose Hope, no matter how painful it is. Because I know it's worth it. 

[Photo found at keshavnarla.wordpress.com]

Hope, the Foolish Child

The child, Hope, is unrelenting in optimism;
Wakes up and says, “Today’s the day,” every day,
Even though It hasn’t happened yet.
With odds against the whole Thing,
Hope seems blind to reality.
A starving Pollyanna,
Hope is a survivalist.
In a concentration camp of pain,
Hope is a finger of grass, poking through the asphalt.

Sometimes you want to strangle her neck,
Silence this thing that seems only to bring disappointment.
But She walks blindly, dodging death and famine,
Evading what seems to be true,
Believing in something that is nowhere in sight.

Continue reading on the Burnside Writer's Collective.