Do you remember what it felt like to optimistically make plans?
To dream?
How hard is it to dream in the midst of uncertainty?
How hard is it to find hope in the midst of cancelled plans and curfews and what feels like terminal isolation?
Plans?
Dreams?
Those are the fairy tales I believed, when I was a child
It was childish optimism, shining out of my childish face in the cracked polaroids that captured holidays in the bright sun, on warm sandy beaches, or stretched out in the shade, sand still clinging to my skin, the salt on my lips mingling with sweet, tart orange segments.
It all feels like such a distant memory, here, in the middle of winter, in the middle of these “unprecedented times”
If I stare hard enough, into her innocent eyes, captured forever in these faded photos, maybe I can steal some of her boundless optimism… maybe I can siphon off some dauntless hope to supplement my dwindling supply …
When I look at her, all freckles and teeth and limbs, hair spiked from salt water and sand, I can remember, you know, what it felt like to imagine that anything was possible, back before life became unreasonably realistic and pragmatism grew stronger than optimism.
But innocence and youthful hopefulness cannot carry my old,weary bones through troubled times…
Maybe “unprecedented times” call for unprecedented optimism…
the kind shaped by persevering
By bleeding through the night and dragging yourself up with the sun to keep going
The indomitable optimism of survival.
Still all freckles and teeth… my hair still an affront to civilised decency,
I am the evolution of that boundless, childish optimism.
I will continue to make it through the night.
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