holding out hope

It's hard to live in this world.

At times, it is hard to accept that this is the only world I have to hand to my child. Yet, the world holds out hope, though in the oddest of ways.

It is not the same way we hold out hope. Not like crossing its fingers and praying - “maybe this time...” It's more like hope is a carrot the world tied to a stick. It leads us around as we bump into furniture, conflicting philosophies, paradoxes beyond our comprehension. We follow the carrot of hope because what else can we do? There is no other path but to starve.

The world holds out hope in the form of soft, rolling green hills, the kind people compare to women's bodies, and the way the horses standing on those gorgeous hills look so terribly, terribly sad.

Its hope looks like walking past the day laborers in front of the 7-11 still waiting at noon on a Friday, men with dark hair under ballcaps, cowboy hats, hoods, half of whom are sitting on the curb scratching lottery tickets. The oddest of ways.

The little yellow plane glides magnificently, tilting on its dragonfly wings, then zips over the highway and back toward the fields. It is magic in the sunlight. And it is only then that I see the trail of white begin, as it rains poison onto young leaves, and the world holds out hope in the oddest of ways.

There is Isaac, peppering his Valentines with stickers of black cats and pumpkins. There are no rules, no borders. His freedom rushes at me like a gust of wind that steals your breath and I have no conscious memory of ever feeling that free, but I must have. I must have. So I long for it, reach back blindly, groping, hope to bump into it in the dark of the day.