Dear Hope,

You were never loud. You never kicked in the door or stood on the table. You just… stayed. Quiet. Present. A flicker when everything else felt like ash.

I didn’t know I had you at first. You weren’t a voice. If you were, I would’ve ignored you. You were a feeling. The smallest pulse under all the noise. The thought that maybe, just maybe, I could be more than this pain. That maybe this wreckage was still worth rebuilding.

You gave me the strength to begin. Not because I knew where it would lead, but because something in me still believed it could lead somewhere better. You were the match that lit the work. The reason I sat down and started writing letters to ghosts and grief and guilt. The reason I keep showing up.

I don’t know who I’ll be at the end of this. But I know I’ll be closer to who I’m meant to be, because you gave me a reason to try. And in a world that keeps asking me to numb out, shut down, give up… you keep whispering, “Begin again.”

Hope, you are the seed. The first crack in the concrete. The breath before healing. The reason I believe that maybe this story doesn’t end where the pain began.

Without you, there is no future. With you, there is a chance.

—In the wreckage,
Unseen, but not undone

Your Junkyard Romeo