Where is the space to dance, when we are so confined by the pores of the walls that are no longer smooth as porcelain, old and tattered by use, abuse and the cruelty of time?
Where is the space to think good thoughts but on the mattress, its exposed springs poking holes on our skin, infested and eroding the gentleness of our being?
Where is the warmth of a hug, a friend, on cold nights, when the sky is lit up in bursts of lightning and the sound of rain smashing on the roof is the only comfort we can depend on?
Hope is a person, a narcissistic manipulator, always showering you with gifts when you least expect it, splaying you wide open, riddled with guilt, for whatever bad it has planned for you, as you lie there willingly, indebted by the charity of which you know you didn’t deserve, that you didn’t want, and without seeming ungrateful, could have done without.
My hatred for Hope expands into a protective shield I hold up in front of my daughters. I know Hope only as disappointment. I know Hope as a dangling carrot that will eventually, systematically, lead to the proverbial stick. I know Hope so well I recognise its smell, that familiar scent of the ground when you’ve fallen off a ladder and then the ladder falls on you.
I want to shout out loud in exasperation, in desperation, for us to be left alone, and yet for something new to happen, something different.
I’ve been gifted Hope on many occasions, but the ones I am given when I am on the end of my rope is the one I am most familiar with. It is a game we play, Hope extending Life, Life extending Hope, giving it a podium to omit its unintentional fabrications like a well-dressed politician.
Some days, I look up at the sky when the sun is piercingly bright, tingling the surface of my skin with its heat, and I think, there it is. There lies the space, to dance, to think; there is the hug, the warmth, that familiar feeling.
And then I trip and fall and tumble again and again in its lies.
There is such depth to the sadness in these beautiful words Lisha... I wish that the stars would fall on you and shower you with the change you ling for... one day my lovely friend - one day..! X