Pandora's Hope

I've witnessed Pandora's Hope with my own eyes,
staring at its immortal form behind its mortal guise.
A blessing, a curse; making us toil long after the day is done,
pushing us harder through a battle that can't be won.
I can only guess at its motives and its reason
since its release from its God-wrought prison.

I have seen it visit you on the edge of death
as you lay gasping with each labored breath.
With your eyes tightly shut in silent pain,
Pandora's Hope burrows deep into your vein,
snaking its way from your arm to your heart
and leaving its eternal mark within your chart.

Defeated, futilely struggling, there you lay.
Can you even hear us and what we say?
Our words of strength reach not your ears,
in your unconscious darkness of pain and fears.
Lifeless are your feeble and atrophied limbs,
your vessel subject to Hope's every whim.

It's not your pain - your suffering - that Hope allays,
but rather our fears and insecurities that It keeps at bay.
And before we realized, before we even knew,
Hope, and Artifice, have crept their way into you.
Hollowed out, Pandora's Hope has made you its shell,
And all for us It traps you - here you dwell.