Hope’s Out Back Smoking with Regret

Some days, hope doesn’t sparkle. It doesn’t radiate or rise. It slips out the back door with regret, lights a cigarette, and stares into nothing. That’s what this piece is about—the in-between moments where optimism hasn’t died, it’s just taking a breather with the one thing it swore it wouldn’t call again.
It’s the feeling of being technically functional but emotionally checked out. Numb. Fried. Done trying to make sense of shit that never made sense in the first place.
The fractured yellow type and inverted layout mirror that emotional limbo—like something once bright now leaning against a wall, trying not to fall apart.
This isn’t hopelessness. It’s intermission. And maybe that’s where the real stuff simmers—in the ashtray conversations between belief and burnout.