hope is not a flower, it's a bramble bush
my roots will grip the decaying soil
my spikes will grow long and deadly
despair will not dull my sharpened edges
i will be the shrike's perch
the grasshoppers thorax will dry and detoxify on my thorns
i will nourish what depends on me
i will protect what lives within me
i will pierce the jaw that bites me
shrikes are songbirds that impale their prey on thorns and barbed wire, often leaving them for days or weeks until the toxins have left their bodies. whether i think of those lines as some kind of prayer or some kind of ham fisted parody of one depends on which of those i need. today it's the former.