Zebra Seeking Spoons

Hope isn’t a sunrise

or a miracle cure.

It’s quieter than that—

a small, steady thing

that refuses to leave.

It lives in the days

when your body feels heavy

but you rise anyway,

even if rising only means

lifting your eyes.

It hides in the slow work

of learning yourself again—

how to rest,

how to listen,

how to stay soft

in a world that keeps asking you

to be steel.

Hope is the breath you didn’t notice,

the one that stayed.

It’s the hand you hold out

to your future self,

saying,

Come with me.

We’ll figure this out together.

It’s not loud,

or perfect,

or constant.

But it returns—

sometimes in the shape of a friend,

sometimes in a quiet morning,

sometimes in the gentle truth

that you are still here.

And being here

is the first

and bravest

kind of hope.