Rust-Tasting Hope

Rust-Tasting Hope

I’ve drunk from chipped enamel cups, from faucets lined with red,

from pipes that coughed up yesterday and iron in the bread.

The future’s not a crystal glass or spotless silver rope—

It’s metal on a tired tongue, this bitter rust-tasting hope.

¨¨

The railing on the fire escape leaves freckles on my palm.

I lean across the city’s jaw and sip the evening’s calm.

Below, the sirens practice scales; above, the planes elope—

between my lungs negotiate another rust-touched hope.

¨¨

Your voice comes through the speakerphone with static at the seams.

A wire that’s seen too many storms, too many dropped-off dreams.

We talk of rent and weather first, then edge toward how we cope.

Trading recipes for breath and small, metallic kinds of hope.

¨¨

I used to think that faith was clean, all polished, bright, and new—

No stains along the handle, no brown bleeding into blue.

But life has scratched its name on me in every shade of nope,

And still my mouth keeps reaching for that old, iron-rich hope.

¨¨

We patch the roof with borrowed tar, the stairs with secondhand,

We plant in broken flowerpots that crumble in our hands.

Yet something blooms through concrete dust and learns a crooked slope,

a blossom that’s familiar with the taste of rust and hope.

¨¨

So let the water run a while and spit out what it must;

We’ll drink what’s left with steady hands and toasts that do not rust.

For even in this dented cup, under a bent-up sky,

I lift this rough, imperfect life and sip, and don’t ask why.