Hope is not ease.
Hope is heart open—
eyes, ears, body and dreams—
to violence.
Hope is pain, beating at you.
It is children screaming.
It is blood and despair. It is futility,
endured.
Hope refuses to turn away,
to sleep, to be distracted, to close doors,
to apportion suffering elsewhere.
Hope is the agony of saying “yes”;
knowing you will be betrayed.
It accepts Judas’s kiss. No,
it kisses him and weeps.
Hope is life in all its pain.
God, save me from turning away to die in luxury.

(A poem to remind me to be fierce.)