This is some ragged hope.
Still breathing by some miracle. Dragged through hell. Clawed it's way back from the grave more times than we care to remember. Up through earth and root and stone. Through social anxiety, failed marriages, lost children. Trips to the ER. Envelopes stamped with "Past-due". Through riots and brutality. Through violence. Loss. Incineration.
This is no wished-upon star. This is no delicate murmured prayer.
This is the flogged hope that comes to us, rises to us, that is us, that is the spirit of the somehow-I'm-still-alive.
This is prophetic hope with a spine rubbed raw from all the carried crosses. Broken backs from carrying the truth to power. From marching to be seen, yelling to be heard, bleeding to be known. Blood the color of royalty.
This is the buried hope that was beneath all things. That was planted deeply. The darkness of the earth pressing it into a new thing. A burning thing. Compressed fear, rage, and promise.
Ignition.
This hope is the flare and flame. Refusal to go quietly into the night.
Some rebel, this hope. Some specter of what should have been extinguished. Buried alive. Returned. Ignited. A burning thing.
Sister, don't you know that resurrections and revolutions are heat and fire - the same light?
Brother, don't you know that saviors and rebels are buried and broken - the same indignation?
This burning breathing hope comes swaddled in grave clothes. Reborn. Rebuking the reaper. Refusing the sentence. Rebelling. Reclaiming.
This is the rising hope.
No candle, are we. No flickering flame. No spark.
We are the bright fiery tide.