hope isn't a color

It's just another form of grey outside, like yesterday and the day before and I'm ready for the break in the clouds to come. I know it's coming. It always comes just in time.

Inside, I'm not much different. There is blue sky galore out there in the future. I can see hints of it if I squint hard. But just now it's another form of grey in there, and I can feel it creeping around inside of me. I feel stiff.

I hadn't played my guitar in weeks when I picked it up again this weekend to play with an old friend. I need new strings. And isn't that just the way it is sometimes? I can play and it sounds okay, but I've got to spend money I don't have to get a couple of weeks of good string sound.

I'm not trying to sound hopeless, because that's not what I feel now. It's never what I feel. There's a hope that's deeper than forty years of grey sky (inside or outside), and I've got both hands on it. Sometimes I feel I'm losing it -- that my grip is slipping -- but in truth, it's got a grip on me.

Hope isn't a color. It's something else entirely that I can't explain. I won't try.