Day Eighteen

(For more information on my 'April Challenge' see HERE)

(91)WAITING FOR EDWARD

I hoped he’d be there. That he hadn’t heard. That I could tell him before anyone else did. I crossed my fingers and begged please. A man with a dog stopped and asked if I was alright. I said I was. But it’d only be true if Edward was there.

(92)THE PAINTING

Hope sits on a rock in the middle of wide water. She wears a blindfold and plays a tune on a one-stringed lyre or harp. Beyond hope almost. And it's a painting that fittingly hangs in a dark place and seeing it I felt the desperate yearning of the painter.

(93)WHAT I HOPE FOR

Ok. If I had one wish? And I can’t wish for a hundred other wishes with that one? And it must be something real? Not being silly or flippant. Not like wishing for world peace on the catwalk of beauty pageants? Well, I’d wish for the end of suffering – mine.

(94)HOPE’S COOKIES

Hope made cookies. She said they were special. Not like ordinary biscuits. Magic, she said. Charms folded into the mixture and dusted with wishes. Bobby wouldn’t eat his right away. He kept it in a tin beside his bed, nibbling like a mouse, and oh the wishes he wished for.

(95)BEYOND HOPE

The painting next to it is a much bleaker prospect. A man clings to a storm broken rock and he wails at the lowering sky and his hair is all ragged and blown and his eyes weep tears and there is no hope in his face, for this is ‘Despair’.