olives

I think that hope must taste like an olive--pungent and briny, like tears or sweat or sex.
I don't think I want a sweet, candy-fluff hope. I want hope that bites back.

I haven't met hope in the form of a bird, something winged and soaring.

I used to think that "poor in spirit" was a soft way of letting rich people into heaven:
no need to be poor, or to turn away from Mammon. You can be rich, rich, rich and still slide right in.

But in the moment of off-putting surprise, under the power of bitter and salt--
as in the first taste of an olive, dearly bought, ill-afforded--
the world cracks open and life rushes in before it closes up again, and that, I think, is like hope.