Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Practiced hope becomes the sermon we preach —
Seeking justice, and trying to live peaceably; but
Even peace has weight — bone, muscle, presence;
And some days, I feel so lost in this present.

Slipping into reflections, my mirror-skin cracks.
When all the smiles I wear shift with the script —
All these different moods, and a different cast.
The broken hands of time can't be set in a cast,
Yet we keep fishing for love, throwing out our
Hearts, trembling hands; hoping it's a good cast

For youthful exuberance — my crustacean lips
Would sometimes sound cleverly selfish.
Saying I want everything, but never speaking  
The language of real and given effort.

Still, everything you long to hold completely
Asks for patience — love, answered prayers,
Dreams and hopes —lest they drift from us,
Being quiet as uncast lines on still water.
Plotting a course toward destiny isn’t as romantic as it sounds.
Some days, I feel like I’m walking on half-baked schemes rather
than solid plans—improvising hope on cracked pavement.
There’s a “field of dreams,” sure, but not the kind where the
grass is greener. Instead, it’s overrun with the weeds of
disappointment—unwelcome thoughts I have to keep plucking
from my mind before they take root. As I try to find cover under
the so-called tree of life, but even its shade feels uncomfortable.
Too warm. Too uncertain. And rest doesn't come so easy when
your thoughts are always so heavy.

And tell me—if someone else’s life came with a perfect promo,
polished and so promising, would you still blame me for
my FOMO? I mean, what if their dream life is the one I was
supposed to live? What if I just missed the sign-up link? To catch
myself trying to live out the picture of someone else’s success,
because this life of mine? It’s painfully YOLO. And I try to
keep my horses steady, but envy isn’t exactly a stable creature.
It wears me down, day by day, like I’m stitched together by
Polo—fashionable on the outside, but worn-out underneath.

Failure, though? Now that’s the real villain. It doesn’t just sting—
it lingers, like emotional PTSD. It makes you flinch at the idea
of trying again, as if effort itself is a pointless punishment.
And fingers? Oh, fingers love to point—especially at people
who haven’t gotten far. But when it comes time to point out
themselves, they suddenly feel too short.

Still, I keep my fingers crossed, quietly hopeful I might achieve
something real—something I truly want as a need. It’s a bright
hope, exhausting in its intensity. But even in darkness, there’s
always the flicker of a new light waiting to be found.
Giving myself odd looks, while trying to even the score—
pointing out my faults like counting sins on abacuses.
Too many to tally, and every action I take I just hope
adds up to something. But I’m outnumbered by myself.

Feels like an inverted midnight— too heavy to be noon.
Doing the most, while barely praying at all— maybe
because doubt multiplies faster than faith settles.

Failures pile up like fractions with no common
denominator— just me, subtracting reasons to believe,
dividing purpose by disbelief, and hoping somehow
I’ll solve it all to find some peace.

Trying to count what I can still hold, not out-of-hand
habits or dust-covered promises. My Bible feels more
antique than answers— pages heavy with silence
until I wiped it off and saw… another layer still
hiding underneath. Like dusk, again. But this time,
I opened it— and let it open me.
Ten toes down. Ten fingers clinging to
the cross — but even I can admit: some
unanswered prayers leave me feeling  
so cross.

Where both the heart and mind
start to whisper —"maybe we’ve already
been crossed out from receiving blessings,"
even after giving ourselves to that same cross.

The soul isn’t an X to unconditional love —
it still holds on, trembling, but my human
nature keeps crossing out its own heart.
Unwilling to believe in the redemption that
bled for it, too caught in its own voice
to hear anything softer.

Pride’s the loudest preacher in the room.
It tells me, "you deserve it all" — as long as it's
everything I want and nothing I have to wait
for; even when I try to even the odds, I’m
reminded: human nature is always at odds
with itself.
Tomorrow is always so dark

I don’t have the eyes to see it, but I’ve got
the faith to believe in it. And if dreams never
die… do we still dream after death?
And do you still dream with open eyes —
or do they close by the end of the night?

We dream in colour in a black-and-white
world. But what’s colour worth when we
judge by shade, by place, by blood?
Even their own goes against their own
for the turf they hold onto of the authority
they own.

My thoughts
  
Black as summer storms over my mind.
Winter is coming, and all we want is to
stay warm by standing with our kind.
And I hear those churchgoers
tell the best lies — where are they going,
if they say they carry His light?
Leading us all into a “tomorrow,” but
is just a place made for the dark…

Tomorrow is always so dark...
and somehow, still the thing we
all hope to find… but it’s also a
place we use as a place to hide.

— The End —