It may not help, but I do enjoy this poem by Caitlin Seida:

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat

• Hope is not the thing with feathers
• That comes home to roost
• When you need it most.

• Hope is an ugly thing
• With teeth and claws and
• Patchy fur that’s seen some shit.

• It’s what thrives in the discards
• And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
• Able to find a way to go on
• When nothing else can even find a way in.

• It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such
• diseases as
• optimism, persistence,
• Perseverance and joy,
• Transmissible as it drags its tail across
• your path
• and
• bites you in the ass.

• Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
• Emily.
• It’s a lowly little sewer rat
• That snorts pesticides like they were
• Lines of coke and still
• Shows up on time to work the next day
• Looking no worse for wear.#