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Humans have a knack for self-destruction. Only those of us who love broken things will ever know why.
Destruction is addictive, he writes. The more I am, the less I want to be. The less I am, the lesser I want to become.
Paper is my heart. Pens are my veins. They return words I stole, blood to paint a scene.
“But sometimes parents love the idea of their child more than the person they are.”
Neo raises a brow. “What’s wrong with its leg?” “What leg?” Sony asks. “Exactly.”
We don’t have diseases. They have us. They found a home in us.
“It started with loneliness,” she says. “I could eat and not taste a thing, cry and not feel sad, sleep and still feel tired. I didn’t like what I used to like or want what I used to want. I thinned until I felt like a blur. A little piece of the background no one would notice had gone missing. And even if I’d never felt emptier, every time I tried to get out of bed, I felt like I was sinking. I’d stare at my clock and watch it tick, wishing I could break it.” She closes her hand around the cuts. It looks like she wants to cry but doesn’t remember how. “Thank God you all hate time too, Sam.
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depression is a better thief than you or I ever will be. It steals moments that should be yours.
“Depression is exactly like fear,” I say. “It’s all shadow and no body, but it’s real.”
“He wrote once that ‘clothes are a strange and clever hiding place. Bruises, scars, insecurities—we hide them all if we choose to, the essential parts of us kept only for the gazes of mirrors and lovers.’ ”
Hikari, I say, not enough courage to voice it out loud. I wish we’d met anywhere else in the world. I wish I were not me. I wish I could touch you and be with you and treat you as you deserve. I wish, more than anything, that I were brave enough to love you again.
You look at me more than anyone ever has, and no one ever looks twice at me. I’m a skull in a graveyard. I’m empty.”
“You can’t escape your own body.”
“It’s not like people say it is,” I say, wiping my face. “When he died, he didn’t take a piece of me with him. He left a piece of himself behind. A hollowness. A reminder that I could never let myself love again without pain to follow. So after the storm passed, it was easier to just pretend it never snowed at all. I stopped asking questions. I stopped looking for reasons. I stopped caring about everyone. And somewhere along the line, I stopped trying to exist too.” Because my stars couldn’t compare to the one that faded into the dark.
“You already saved me, you idiot,” he says. “You saved all of us.”
Sony and I hold each other’s gaze as I whisper, “I just wish I could’ve given you more.”
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.
“Everything in life is a gamble, my dear, even love itself.”
But none look at one another the way Sam looks at me.
“Look,” I whisper, pointing at the sky. “Our stars are out.” “Yes, sweet Sam,” he whispers. He stretches his limbs like a cat on a rooftop and kisses my cheek. “Our stars are out.”
Eric caresses the surface of the box. He presses his forehead to it and closes his eyes. A moment passes, and I remember those days Sony fell asleep hooked up to a ventilator. I remember how he used to cry and choke it all down so she wouldn’t wake. I remember the whispers I could never make out every night after tucking her in. It’s only now, as I hear it up close, that I realize they weren’t renditions of good nights or little reminders to stay alive or anything so confined to a nurse-patient relationship. They were a father’s I love yous. Eric opens the box. “Good night, Sony,” he whispers.
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“No, no—this heart is what makes me me,” C says, pointing at his chest. He meets Neo’s gaze, affection and fear mingling in the mix. “My heart beats with thunder and lightning, and I know it’s weak, but it’s the one I gave you.”
“I want to be with you,” C says. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. What if I don’t get the chance?”
He didn’t have chest pains that sometimes got so bad he felt like he was dying. He wasn’t lonely to the point of crying at night. He didn’t look at his ceiling, listening to his music, wondering if he was just an outline, someone who was secretly made of glass without a center. A hollow beast with a bleeding heart.
‘To my Coeur,’ ” Neo mocks, “ ‘for making fun of this manuscript before it was even finished.’ ”
“My love,” Sam says like it’s a statement of its own, a kiss that’s spoken rather than had. “All my tomorrows are yours.”
“We’ll take vials of my medicine. I’ll be careful. I can get a job. I’ll take care of us,” he whispers,
I want him to be happy. I want him to be happy with me. I want him, and he wants the world. So for the first time, I’m not sure that I’m enough.
Neo throws his head back against the wall, his crazed laughter becoming a long sigh. “I wonder, Dad, would you change now?” he asks. “If you knew that the boy I love just died? Would you hug me and tell me it’ll all be okay?”
“What about your story?” I ask, trembling at the thought of him asleep with a tube taped to his mouth, at the thought that he is okay with dying in such a way. “What about all the stories you have to tell?” “Only one matters,” he says, taking my hand, stilling it. “And I trust my narrator will finish it well.”
“I’m mad because you’re the only thing I live for,” he whispers. “And you can’t even tell me who you are. You can’t even say you love me.”
The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep on living day after terrible day.
LONELINESS IS A soft-spoken abuser, singing lullabies, you are alone, you are nothing, you are empty.
I told her that Neo died in the way he wanted. I tell her he sailed his ocean, and he emerged with the people he loves on the other side.
Sam, Your garden grew and flourished and it was beautiful for a time. It fell ill and died and its beauty lasts only in memory. But without you, Those flowers might’ve never known light. So to our narrator and dearest friend, thank you For the memories. For the goodbyes. For the Heaven.
In the end, my curse is simple. I will remember those I love longer than I had a chance to know them.
“Do you think the sun rises because it fell?”
Night falls. He parts from me. He walks out into the cold. I follow him onto the bridge above still, black water. I tell him who I am. But I cannot sway him. I cannot stop him. Sometimes hope just isn’t enough. It isn’t meant to save people. The dark swallows him, and I watch him die.
Chronic illnesses are just that. Chronic. Reoccurring. Forever. They are not annoying, occasional pains to get rid of with a pill. They are persistent in their pursuit of your sanity.
A chronic illness is not difficult to live with because it is endless. It is difficult to live with because it is unpredictable.
“Will you come back, my love?” I ask. “When you’ve lived this life and had your loves, and you’re ready, will you come back to me one last time?”
Sam was its first love. In one way or another, all first loves are lost.
Sometimes death is more merciful than life, and he chose its mercy over mine, it said.
Forever is an illusion for mortal things, but time felt sorry for me, it said. Time patched up my wounds, dried my tears, and did the best it could simply by passing.
Hope is the dirty white sneakers on otherwise ever-bare feet. The sweatshirts we share. The promise poems torn at the edges. The headphones with always-knotted wires and the dances on cold rooftops. The boring, comfortable hum of machines and the cool, thrilling beaches. The shadows against a protruding spine caressed by your lover. The heat of a kiss and icy fingertips against reddened cheekbones. The little moments. The everything moments. The moments before the sun chooses to rise.
To my eternal sun, My love for you did not begin. It did not end. What we share is not a chronological feat. It is a promise of its own. It is the most basic form of trust. It can be broken and rebuilt. It can fade and reignite. But it cannot be stolen. Not even by death. We were an eclipse. A moment the sun and moon met. A flash of light wherein hope reached for despair and they embraced, whether it be for a single moment or eternity. Tonight, I will climb to the rooftop thinking of you. My ghosts roam beside me, a missing lung, a missing heart, and a missing mind returned by the night. I
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