It could be easy for me to let my grip slip. To fall effortlessly away from what chains me. My grasping fingers grow weary, my dangling heart eclipsed by trepidation. It would be so much simpler to forfeit now. But hope is here, and it has become the single tentative thread that keeps me attached to my turnkey. Hope binds me endlessly to all of that which feels like a prize too entirely fought for. It’s the little red string that maps a path of hard losses and triumphant campaigns. But now it’s wrapped around my neck. A beautiful asphyxiation I pray to end and I grasp to keep. Hope is the ill advised tourniquet I cling to for dear life. The evanescence of a still platform, I’m left to be brandished by the wind. A feeling so strikingly tart I pucker at it, turns easily bitter in my mouth. Perhaps it’s the poet in my heart that hopes to be spoon fed this aching elixir without end, but darkness has no lease here. I’m only left with the lingering aftertaste that hope doles out.