# Hope To Live I wish to live beyond the reach of death's dark hand, to see the sun rise gold over fields I'll never own, to hear the rain sing on a roof that shelters someone else's dreams. I wish to live though my name will fade like pencil marks on paper, though my words will scatter like leaves the wind forgets, and no one will remember the shape of my hunger, the particular slant of my longing. I wish to live in the space between heartbeats, in the pause before speech, in the moment when light breaks through cloud and the world holds its breath. I wish to live not for glory or monument, not for the echo of applause or the permanence of stone, but for the taste of water on a dry tongue, for the warmth of another's hand, for the stubborn, unreasonable belief that tomorrow might be different, that suffering might teach us something besides how to suffer better. I wish to live— this simple, fierce, ordinary wish— the way a seed wishes in the dark earth, not knowing if spring will come, but splitting itself open anyway, reaching toward a light it has never seen.