Hope is longing made easier by faith.

From Alfred’s journal

A woman stood at the bus shelter on Cedar for forty minutes this morning, and the sign said the route was suspended. She read it twice. Then she kept standing there. For years I thought hope and wanting were the same animal wearing different coats, and that the difference was only how loudly you said it. But she was not wanting the bus any harder than I would have; she was waiting without the weight of it, which is another thing entirely. Hope is longing made easier by faith, and the easing is the whole of it, not the getting. The bus never came. She walked off at a quarter past nine, unhurried, and I could not tell from the fence whether anything had been taken from her.