We bury our children in our hopes
Hopes made like icicles formed one drop at a time from our tears
Born of our own unfulfilled dreams.
Those tears of sorrow weigh heavy on the backs of our children.
In desperation to please us and bring us joy
Their own hopes get lost and go unfulfilled.
So the sins of one generation are passed on to the next and the next.
Family is sacrifice.
We wish so much for our children, how many of those wishes go unstated?
How much of the happiness we wish for them remains unspoken?
What is the language of hope?
How can something so fragile and so important,
get formed into clumsy and shoddy words?
Words are rarely up to the task of expressing hope.
So hope remains silent, an inarticulate presence,
a seed in the earth, unable to break through into the sunlight.
Hope is a thread of gold,
beautiful, frail and ill suited to the task of holding anything together,
let alone something as big and complex as a human life.
Yet it is the only thread we have.
Life may not hold together well.
Sometimes the smallest tension can rip hope apart.
So we begin to weave life back together.
We rebuild again and again.
The seams do not hold, they yield and disintegrate.
Still we go on using hope.
There is nothing else to use.