Hope and Worry: Not Twins, Triplets.

Poetry Prompt: Hope

the oddest but perhaps most useful thing about our existence is that we can think about the past, and use that knowledge to predict the future.

in Worry, we have this ever-growing decision tree, where option 1 branches options 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 which in turn branch into each of their own little sprouting hydra heads anticipating the next strike.

in Hope we have a yearning for the future the belief that something good can come from stepping forward in time, that maybe worst-case scenario 1.1.4.63.7 may not come and instead we may lay on a soft bed of fresh nice-smelling flowers as the sun gently strokes our forehead.

to me it seems frightening and exhausting to only have Worry and no Hope;

yet silly and frivolous to believe that Hope exists without Worry.

But perhaps we mostly forgot about the third sister — Likelihood — neither blossoming in positivity nor wallowing in negativity, but simply the average, most likely outcome that can be kind of inconvenient with small silver linings, and overall mostly palatable.

Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) wants to thank Sahil Patel for this invitation to write about Hope! She often wrangles between the two extreme sisters in this story, Worry and Hope, but forgets that Likelihood is actually the sister she’ll likely spend the most time with. The odd one out, mostly tolerable.

Read my other poem about twin sisters: Eudaimonia and Hedonia