Emily Dickinson’s “ ‘Hope’ is a thing with feathers” was one of the first poems I ever read and loved. It captured everything that is hope. Each stanza simplified what hope is and yet made it so much more complex. Hope is small and large, it is specific and broad.

This comes from the imagery that Dickinson uses. A bird—a thing with feathers. Things that migrate and change with the seasons. Birds are both temporal and constant—like hope—as anyone who has ever been depressed can tell you. One moment you feel it and the next moment it is like it has never been there at all. But Dickinson’s poem never fails to fill me with hope about the nature of the emotion. Hope “perches in the soul,” which means it’s in there even when I can’t find it. And that hope “never stops – at all –” makes me feel small in the best possible way. I cannot lose hope because hope is constant. I am not responsible for caring for hope, as one does for keys or kids or husbands or household items when their warranty runs out.

Hope is more than what my limited little brain wants to make it. To paraphrase Dickinson, it would take one hell of a storm to defeat the voice of hope. And because I am so small, so limited, I am happy that I can’t imagine what that storm might be. But hope isn’t just about me. Hope has “kept so many warm –,” and there Dickinson is correcting my misstep again. Because hope is more than me. I have hope, yes, but many have hope. And, collectively, we all hope. We have hopes for the next generation, our children. We have hope for our partners. We all most certainly have hope for the future of those warranty-less household items. Hope is individual and collective. I have hopes, you have hopes, we all have hopes.

 

I was 16 when I first read this poem. I was enthralled by the last lines of “ ‘Hope’ is a thing with feathers”: “Yet – never – in Extremity/It asked a crumb – of me.” I interpreted these lines to mean that hope is the ultimate low-maintenance emotion. It was always going to be there, right? No gale-force winds or sub-zero temperatures were going to kill it, so why should I worry about it? I also used this line as justification to distance myself from people. “Look, it’s right there in the poem,” I’d think. Hope doesn’t need anything, or anybody. It’s good. I’m good. Emily’s good.

But I am far from 16, and life has taught me that this is not the case. Hope is a thing with feathers. It is like a bird, and birds migrate together. We have many words for groups of birds: flocks, colonies, fleets. But they all refer to the same concept: a group. Finding a community has been vital to the return of my hope through all the seasons, both past and present, and hopefully all the future ones as well. So, while hope may never ask for a crumb from me, it needs those crumbs of support from friends, family, and community. When others are supporting you, you can feel weightless, much like flying.

 

It’s no surprise that the writers in this issue have all noted the same phenomenon. They have all chosen to write about community in some way, whether that be having support like in Straightforward and Safe and Everyday Heroes, or feeling distanced from it, like in Arthur, Again, Bump, and Koan. Often, it can be both, as in Wendy’s Eighty-Eighth and A Philadelphia Winter. Or that support can exist, but be limited, like in Assurances and Anatomy of Assault. But what is clear from these pieces—and clear to me now—is that hope does need something to thrive. It needs a flock.

This is what I hope. I hope that you thrive this year. I hope that you find your flock to help you through those gale-force winds, the chilliest seasons, the strange lands you end up on, and everything else. I hope that you help someone else to have hope. I hope that your kids, partners, friends, and families thrive this year. I hope that your toaster, coffeemaker, or crockpot still has its warranty. I hope that you support these and other artists and writers, by whatever means you have. I hope that they feel your support through the din. I hope that you read these pieces and feel a little bit better than you did before. I hope that you know that I appreciate you being part of the PSM family.

Let’s fly together again, shall we?

AM Larks is the fiction editor of Please See Me.

Header image: Singing Tree of Trust by Amy Oestreicher