Seven years is slightly less than ¼ of my life so far, and exactly ¼ the number of years of memories I have tucked away somewhere in the eternal labyrinth of mushy grey stuff hidden away in my skull. (I remember my first memory quite distinctly. It is rather mundane and extraordinarily unremarkable, but I know it is the first. Me and my dad were driving south on Alvarado St. in Echo Park, past the Safeway just before Reservoir St. Why this sticks to me, I don’t know.)

Seven years—the duration of misfortune traditionally ascribed to breaking a mirror (and I’ve broken a few mirrors) In this time I’ve had almost all of my hopes completely extinguished, only to be rekindled again, unlooked for, and then smothered, but still smoldering.

But this flame won’t die. At least not quite yet. The fire of life. One of my teachers uses this common metaphor to accurately describe the physiologic processes of living, specifically, of respiration, of oxygen delivery and consumption, of what is essentially combustion. Nearly all of our trillions of cells each contain thousands of tiny microscopic internal combustion engines, and somehow the trite cliché becomes an accurate depiction of the molecular processes going on inside mitochondria.

And as long as the fire burns, it will be impossible not to hope.