I've Got a Jar of Hope

Discordant

Disruptive

Disrespectful

All labels I’ve borne

For daring to ask

Where lies the truth?

🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺

All evils known

All yet to be seen

Fled the jailing jar

Escaping to our reality

The waking world of mortals

Infecting our lives

A perfect world destroyed

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Yet, how, in turn does

Hope, remaining forevermore

Imprisoned, encased in clay

No escape route

Or possible way to reach

The masses

Steeped in desolation

No avenue to access

Hope's mercy

🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺

What transformation

Has taken place?

Who changed the

Rules of this ancient game?

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No, hope wasn’t saved

It’s been withheld, dangled

Like a carrot extended

On a stick’s sharpened end

Shining in the dank

Endless night

A golden lantern

always just out of range

mortal reach falling short

every time

🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺🏺

Hope has become

Nothing more than a

Miraculous guiding light

Drawing us all forward

Though try as we might

None will ever reach it

Eternally sealed tight

K.B. Silver

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This was a subject I had arguments with my teachers over in school. I read voraciously as a child, and mythology was one of my favorite topics to read about. While covering a mythology unit in school, several years I got into it with my teacher over the myth of "Pandora’s Box," as I always saw the fact humans were unaffected by the evils when they were sealed in the jar (the story says amphora, an amphora is a jar, not a box) but made life difficult once released, meant it was impossible for hope to interact with humans while it was left behind and resealed in the box.

When I got to college and my professor finally acknowledged this as a valid line of reasoning I thanked her and broke down in tears. After being marked wrong over and over again, and having gotten in trouble for “arguing” when I was simply pointing out an alternative understanding of the text, it was overwhelming. I don’t think she knew what to do about that either.