hope takes a walk
by Paul Smith
HOPE: You didn’t see me
At all, today.
I decided to take a tour of the grounds
Again.
Visited the pond with those ducks you used to like
Picked some of the weeds by the tree we used to eat under
You know,
Everyone treats them like they’re a disturbance
But, I picked some of the weeds by our tree near the pond and
I put them in a vase that I bought near the village markets
Just adorable
The woman who sold it to me
She said that she used crushed berries to tint the mush she was molding
To suit the eyes of the man who first showed her what love could be
He left her after she became with child because
He was cursed
Meant to be a husband and not a father
Can you imagine that
A man born to not make more men
But she loved him anyway and feared she would reach the age where
She may forget how his iris flashed and morphed when paired against sunlight
The rays would change what was seemingly dark to reveal a
Universe of violets and rubies and emeralds
Everything but the blackness that astronomers see
Before they know what lies in front of them
And after learning what he, the man with the nice eyes, had in front of him,
He vanished
After she learned of his very vanishing,
Once she accepted he wasn’t coming back
After all that time
She went out to find those berries because
She wouldn't forget those eyes.
I asked her why she was selling it,
The last of her husband.
She smiled and said:
2
“Today,
I woke up and realized
He wasn’t mine anymore.
And then I asked myself if he ever was.
I asked it out loud and
Heard nothing back, and
I can’t forget that silence, so
It needs to go.
I emptied the whole of what we had
So now it could be yours.”
So,
I bought it, filled that hole, and
Picked some of the weeds by the pond near our tree.
I find it beautiful.
Don’t you?
Paul Smith (he/il, they/iel) is a Thursday-born performer, writer, director, dramaturg, and producer from Stittsville, Ontario, now based in Toronto. Their work explores how bridges can be built to connect and care for both emerging and late-generation artists, how Black and African cultures reflect two sides of the same coin, and how spirituality, identity, and myth can reshape narratives that center marginalized bodies into stories of reclamation, innovation, and protest.
As a playwright, he uses prose and poetry as narrative devices within his dialogue, resulting in monologues like this. Drawing from his play THE GATHERING, the following excerpt comes from a scene titled “Between the Moon and the Sun.” The five-act play follows multiple generations of a Ghanaian-Canadian family, exploring themes of tradition, fidelity, and mysticism. In this scene, Hope—a smart woman and soon-to-be matriarch—confronts her husband Amos, a man of affluence and soon-to-be patriarch, about his misguided attention, torn between his wife and the young woman who appeared during the storm.