Under his mattress, he keeps crystallized memories of hope. They look like diamonds, though only the naive are fooled into buying them. He strictly accepts cash stamped by the future's dutiful clerks. When left in the sunlight, the crystals dissolve, leaving nothing but a sweet smell of incinerated possibilities.

Admiration leads the flock of the weak. Sit high on your throne, while I worship your footsteps' marks on wet sand; they begin to fade so I whisper, please, don't let me fall again. Yet you're trapped in silence, no sound shall ever reach your ears; remote as an iceberg, ever since I decided to entomb you inside my least realizable dream.

Humanity was scandalized: He'd committed the unforgivable sin of telling the truth on TV. Ask me to come find you and I will, like an insect hopelessly drawn to the light, no you won't, no you won't, no you won't... Perhaps I never learned to give up on lost cases, perhaps they never taught me how to resist Hope's ravaging lure.