As I opened the worn pages of the poetry collection, a fragment of Virginia Woolf's verse greeted my weary eyes, breathing life into my desolate soul. "Hope is a thing with feathers," her words whispered softly, like a gentle breeze caressing my troubled mind. In that moment, I stood at the precipice of despair, my spirit adrift and my path obscured by shadows. The abyss yawned before me, its insatiable hunger beckoning, waiting for the faintest gust to cast me into its depths. I felt utterly lost, my direction obscured by a fog of hopelessness that clung to me like a suffocating shroud.