I Fell in Love with Hope

by Lancali

“Why do people have to die?” she asks, and all of her hurt escapes in those few words. There is no cure for grief. It is the most tangible yet intangible of pains because only one thing can make it livable. Forgetting is not an essential part of it. Time is. Time stands beside me now, its own shadow. My enemy that has also been my companion. It bends down and casts a gentle palm over the thin layer of Hikari’s hair. It does not promise a future, but it promises a past that cannot be stolen. It promises that it will go on for her. “I don’t know,” I say, because it is the only truth I have. “We will look for a reason till even the sun and moon are gone because we believe that an answer will balance the tragedy.” Hikari stares up at me with desperation glimmering in her tears. I wipe them away as mine fall with hers. “There is no reason for tragedy,” I say. “One day, the universe will collapse, death will have no one left to claim, disease will have no one to infect, and time will come to an end, but even then, it will not have been for nothing. Because if we chose to only love what we couldn’t lose, then we would never love at all.”