a brief epistemology of hope

Courtesy of PxHere.

i.

you’re turning twenty in a month and what do you know about the world? you know that the sky is blue (sometimes). you know things fall when you let go of them (sometimes). you know people are fundamentally stupid, but for some reason you always hope they won’t be, and then you’re let down by the inevitable cruelty of an unopened palm on a sheet of rusted nails. you know you’re lonely, but you’ve always known that. you’ve always known that knowledge is a full revolution of the stars around the sun and that people change in ways that even the poets cannot describe and you know one day your father will stop believing in forgiveness so you stand on tall buildings in the gray moments of the morning  and you scream at birds until your throat is a strip of orange peel perforated at both ends but they don’t scream back. their vocal chords weren’t built for articulating sadness. yours were.

ii.

today the sandwich you buy from the cafe is eighty percent tuna and twenty percent witch. the clouds pass by overhead so fast you trip over your shoelaces trying to keep up. it’s three in the afternoon and there’s a moon the size of a paper plate in the sky; eventually you give up on trying to chase clouds, and settle for the milkman pinned to the ceiling. the other day someone asked you why you didn’t have feelings for them and you replied, “well, why is the sky blue?” like the answer was somewhere in your curt voice through the phone. it wasn’t, but you hoped if they searched hard enough they’d forget about you and you could grab your keys in the confusion and run away. their confession leashed you up and turned you into a photograph of a person you’d never met. you had to bite through the film reel to leave; it left a scar, right where your mouth began.

iii.

you put the spoon in the body of a bird and call it science. you cross the river and call it a river. you are so far from home there is no longer any difference to you whether you are on the side of the road or on it, your backpack dragging behind you on the sidewalk, the wind blowing your hair into your eyes, but beauty has the same name in every country. whether the body is dressed in jackets or in rivulets of sunlight it’s still desirable. to want someone is to hold a gun between two fingers. every day nails and tuna sandwiches and footprints leading into the forest, your rifle cocked at your hip, your eyes gray and angry, and so what? in spite of everything, you’re still full of hope. you’ll move forward like this, dragging nineteen years of silence behind you, and when you finally reach the pearly white gates at the edge of the city, they’ll kiss your palms with smiling mouths and you’ll bring out your guitar and your old mandarin lover and say:

let me tell you what i know about wonder.