Sometimes, when I get my hopes up, I would imagine a gun in my hands and shoot the flying yellow canary down.
I thought: its life would already have been short-lived, and nothing would have come from it anyway. Better to finish it off fast than to let it suffer.
"The only product of hope is disappointment." That's what I constantly reminded myself.

But then, I realized, what I was shooting at wasn't a canary.

The bird morphed into the shape of a girl, her frightened eyes staring back at me. I knew who she was, I could recognize her anywhere; because I see her everyday.

And then I finally understood.

I wasn't just trying to ****** a bird, or a stranger, or my hopes.
I was trying to **** me. I was destroying myself, starting from the inside out.

I was getting the over-idealistic colours ****** out of my soul, in preparation for the funeral procession that would officially get me stamped and labelled as a sensible, practical, money-making product of society.