I’ve been fooled.

All my life, I believed that to hope
was to rest in a bed of flowers
held
but if the last hundred colorless days have 
taught me anything, it’s that to hope
is the hardest thing you’ll ever do
to hope
is to lift your bleeding head
grunting, crying if you must

stand on the withering stalks of your legs
know
that even if sparks catch your hair
and you burn

even the soot that floats into the sullen sky
will reach heaven