The Death of Hope

It doesn’t happen quickly.  

It never does.  

It begins with needling—  

a whisper of doubt  

threaded through the seams  

of morning resolve.  

Then chipping—  

the slow theft of certainty  

by small, unremarkable moments  

that forget to love you back.  

Flaking—  

as the surface peels  

the myth of purpose  

you once wore like armor

begins to fade 

Cracking—  

when silence is cleaved 

by memories of broken promises

and forgotten dreams

Calving—  

you shed yourself of the dreams

that you failed to realize

and lie about how

important they actually were.

Crumbling—  

under the weight  

of unspoken grief  

and the absence of witness

you slough off the last vestiges

until even the shape of longing  

is lost to dust.  

It is here in the absence of time 

The cruel arithmetic of life 

Is laid bare.

No countdown.  

No climax.  

Just the slow bleed  

of meaning into repetition.  

in that vacuum:  

- Self-doubt,  

  dressed as humility.  

- Justification,  

  masquerading as logic.  

- Capitulation,  

  disguised as grace.  

- Self-deception,  

  perfected into ritual.  

is witness to a murder.

There is no scream or cry

but a whimper—  

a soft, internal folding  

of dreams into  

desperate scrambles  

for scraps of comfort.  

A life well-intentioned,  

but effectively zero-sum.  

A ledger of effort  

balanced only by silence.  

Until finally—  hope dies.  

And for the unlucky …

The mind and body live on.  

Haunted by echoes  

of what could have been.  

Kept alive by muscle memory  

and the cruel efficiency  

of biological systems  

that do not ask  

if the soul consents