Hope Floats
Art by Pennie Mirande, “Step of Faith”
Holding fast to hope in turbulent times is not an empty cup. It conjures far more from its enduring depths and places soft landing in our hands. Hope is not a wan promise, nor a weak vanity. It is a fierce courage that arises in response to troubling reality, holding us through and beyond it, planting seeds in our every footstep.
When life steals our breath for its furnace or menaces us with fetid tragedy, hope is the tinkle of keys. Even as our hearts crack, their faultlines shimmer from within with a dull gold we cannot always perceive from outside our bony cages. A weightless promise of different days ahead that can be counted on to pass towards you. Beyond darkness, dawn keeps creeping our way on silent pointed toes.
As the world rears and twists towards the tipping point and the fates ready to mark another notch on the wheel, hope arcs from the shadows. Its song knits itself into the wind whipping your hair around. Its tender morsels burrow under your skin unbidden and wait in warm corners for your shining eyes to feel their patient presence already inside you.
As the bright dark moon ratchets to the threshold that presupposes the next season, let your feet trail dreams into this collective stream of consciousness. Pray for their mercy and welcome arrival. Scatter the promise of the future into your every step. Hold yourself to your faith like a lover and whisper all your sweet nothings into its purse.
Hope won't ever knock loudly on your door, nor bend to the impatient demands of an entitled world. It lives in the way you stir your coffee and make dinner for your hungers. How you chant over your children and play with your long hair in the afternoon sunshine. In the tug of a smile or the unassailable warmth of a hug that goes on too long.
Hope is the thing whose feathers flutter from deep within, softening our focus under harshest glare and promising us something even tomorrow cannot guarantee. Its music equal to the symphony of the whole world at once, and the enchanted longing written on your bones.
I'm not made from the kind of earth that buries
I'm made from the kind that resurrects
~ @mazadohta
Words c. Kerrie Basha 2022