I Fell in Love with Hope

by Lancali

Sony says she has ninety cents. (Sony is a natural freeloader, as thieves must be. Those ninety cents came from a fountain she decided to swim in the other day for no particular reason.)

Because his sea is thick with suffering, and we are who he chose to row with.

The ocean graces us with tart, salty scents. We grace it with our scream-singing voices and poor renditions of beloved classic rock songs. Windows down. Music blasting. Not a care for what we leave behind.

In Hikari’s arms, I forget what I am and where I am from. The idea of home no longer has gravity. I have flown off my orbit, chosen to follow meteors with no aim but to roam. I am not afraid of what constitutes life or mere existence. I watch and yet I smile, hug, kiss, run, speak, sing, shout, swim, play, create, and love all the same. This place—this exact spot where land and sea meet—is where the world was born. It is where time ceases, disease festers, and death dies. Because the world was built for kids who dreamt of life and were raptured by loss. It is theirs, and it is mine. It is ours to claim, and it is ours to reap. In this place, freedom takes us by the hand, and we dance to its rhythm in coarse, cool sand and wild, welcoming waters. In the book of our lives, upon a single page dedicated to its creation, we name it Heaven.

“Ever thought of turning your heartbeat into a song?” Neo whispers, tucked against C’s chest, his ear pressed against the hollowed valley. “Would you write the lyrics?” C asks. Neo shrugs. “We can write them together.” “I’d like that,” C whispers. “After our story?” “Yeah, after our story.”

Sobbing why are they adorable

Sony is on her back, her eyes wide and afraid, her nails digging into the bed of the truck, her chest caved in. Spots swell on her right side as blood spurts from her throat and stains her chin.

WHAT

Death isn’t playful. Death is sudden. It has no taste for irony or reason. It is a taker, plain, direct, no tricks up its sleeve. But at least, This time, Death was kind enough to wait for goodbye.

Because you don’t lose someone once. You lose them hearing a song that reminds you of their smile. Passing an old landmark. Laughing at a joke they would’ve liked. You lose them infinitely.

“I didn’t even know her very long,” Hikari says, tucking the stone back into her pocket. “It feels like I started to love her and never got to finish.” Love isn’t a thing that’s ever finished, I want to tell her. It’s not a chronological feat. Her love for Sony is based on gentle affections, loud adventures, and the little pieces of friendship people tend to overlook. It does not end simply because we had to say goodbye.

Grief can be destructive, a parasite that needs expulsion, water flowing over a dam, but like most terrible, necessary things, it can be shared. Time is kind with grief. It takes it from you, piece by piece, till the sorrow is a song you remember the beat of but no longer hear.

Coeur cried silently the first night. He felt bad, yes, but more so, he missed Neo. Although that wasn’t entirely correct either. In French, you do not say you miss someone. You say they are missing from you.

“Life is made of so many goodbyes welded together.” He squeezes, his touch as tangible as the day I first felt it. “So dread the endings. Cry and rage and curse them.” A sad smile plays on his lips. “Just don’t forget to cherish the beginnings and all that comes in between.”

I wonder, in his arms, how something as intangible as hope is lost. It cannot be misplaced. It cannot be thrown aside. That means it must be forgotten. Forgetting is an essential part of grief.

LONELINESS IS A soft-spoken abuser, singing lullabies, you are alone, you are nothing, you are empty.

I used to have an estranged concept of love. I think I tried to give it a face the way I give faces to all things I don’t understand. But from the look on Eric’s face as he remembers Sony dancing, I know for certain that it cannot be stolen.

I am not a person. I cannot die. I will never fear death. It cannot touch me. Neither can disease or time. All they can do is take from me. Now you understand why it is so dangerous for me to live? Everyone wonders what comes after death, but none can grasp the cruelty of being kept alive forever. In the end, my curse is simple. I will remember those I love longer than I had a chance to know them.

Sometimes hope just isn’t enough. It isn’t meant to save people.

“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.”

Even books, broken things, and hope have souls.

Hope chased despair down the street that day. It caught her by the waist, and it saved her just as she had saved it from the unbearable brightness of their own making. After all, suns cannot see their own light. So hope and despair held each other close until the shadows were gone.

A chronic illness is not difficult to live with because it is endless. It is difficult to live with because it is unpredictable. But like grief, every flare ends, and though the looming threat is constant, you learn to live beside it. A shadow of mixed blessings. It does not heal as wounds do, but it teaches you of your own strength till you can wear it like a battle scar.

I knew that there would come a day of no tomorrows. I knew, and I cry anyway.

It fell in love with resilience. Resilience is tough, skinned with taut language made of iron. He was forged by hate, dented but never broken. Beneath the impenetrable, fragile bones built his body. He was small, not broad as a shield should be. None of that mattered, though. Resilience is in the mind. He was made of poetry and broken things. Of stubbornness and dry humor. Of memories written not as proof of survival, but as proof that he lived. It fell in love with kindness. Kindness was always meant for a brittle, bleeding heart. Perhaps not very bright, nor very ambitious, kindness grew, never decorative, but always present. He knew, carrying resilience in his arms, hugging passion around the belly, and caressing hope’s missing color, that he was needed. The melodies he shared drew smiles greater than artists ever could. It fell in love with passion. Passion was a goddess. She ebbed and flowed in the sea, her waves carving cliffsides. Her humor alone could take over the world. Grinning ear to ear, she spouted foul words, pretty words, all the words she wanted. Shame cowered in fear of her. Passion gave kindness friendship on which to lean, resilience a reason to laugh, and hope a fellow flame to dance with. And hope. Hope is the bittersweet companion of loneliness. It lives in creatures of the forever, a caring home with more curiosity than sense. It tells little white lies and steals here and there. It gets lost. Lost in those who need it. Hope tastes like a day at the...

In the end, mean or kind, the world is full of people who are all similar. We are bone and blood, and some consciousness tied to it. So don’t give your enemies the satisfaction of watching life go by, and whether it be a passion, a place, a person, or just a lonely friend bound to ink and paper, love as hard and as long as you can.