Hope Feigning Indifference

On surviving without relief

Intro

Some seasons don’t bring answers.

They don’t soften, don’t resolve, don’t even clearly wound.

They simply ask you to stay.

This poem came from a place where healing hadn’t arrived yet but leaving wasn’t an option either. What remained wasn’t peace or despair, but something quieter and more stubborn. The choice to keep existing with honesty.

⸻

Something in my chest learned
to exist without relief—
not healing, not breaking, not bending.

Just becoming a crowded place—
ghosts of the past
whispering doubt,
where I hoarded tension.

Like a campfire starved of fuel
white ash lifting upward, drifting away,
refusing to fade or die.

Holding fast to its last ember
smoldering, longing for release
with a fragile warmth that kept me alive.

I never stopped believing—
I just gave up reaching.
My hands remained open anyway,
aching in that familiar way,
when hope feigns indifference.

And maybe that’s when I understood—
some lessons come twofold:
silence isn’t always absence
just a different kind of asking. 

Every weight I insisted on carrying alone left something else neglected:
rest postponed,
joy rationed,
love abandoned. 

The reaching I gave up on
was never required;
only the staying.

Only the staying—
where belief learned
how to breathe on its own,

my hands still aching
for something to take hold of,
for something warm enough to keep. 



M.R. Jones
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Reflection

There is a kind of strength that doesn’t look like progress.

It doesn’t announce itself as growth or victory.

It looks like holding an ember long past the point of comfort.

Not because it is warm, but because it is alive.

I’ve learned that hope doesn’t always shine.

Sometimes it pretends not to care.

Sometimes it survives by lowering its voice.

If you are in a place where nothing feels resolved

where you are not breaking, not healing, not moving forward in any measurable way

this poem is for you.

You are not stagnant.

You are sustaining.

And that counts.