I Fell in Love with Hope

by Lancali

why is a loud question, and death is quiet.

if you pretend for too long, reality reminds you one way or another that it doesn’t like being insulted.

Remember that just because the stars fell doesn’t mean they weren’t worth wishing on.”

Time, disease, and death are the greatest thieves in the world.

“Love is hard to walk away from, even if it hurts.”

if I gave you the ending you wanted, you wouldn’t remember it.”

You don’t have to partake in destruction to admire the weapons.

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.

Secrets make people vulnerable. Vulnerability is an isolating force. It pushes people away.

Paper is my heart. Pens are my veins. They return words I stole, blood to paint a scene.

Love gives people the power to be treacherous. Being hurt by someone you share such a thing with is draining—a needle under the skin or a knife in the rib.

Hate is a choice. Love is not.

“But sometimes parents love the idea of their child more than the person they are.”

To all who stole from us, we defy you. You tempt the world and lay waste to it, but try and lay waste to us. Our minds are stronger than our bodies, and our bodies are not yours to call weak. We will kill you in every way we know. That way, when we must go, the playing field is even. Time will end. Disease will fester. Death will die.

“Some people write so their name will be bigger than the title,”

“I think the worst feeling in the world is telling someone you’re in pain and hearing them say there’s no wound.”

“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.’ ”

ignorance is worse than cruelty.

Hope is ignorance, a liar, an accidental creature made of fear. And it failed my first love just as it failed me.

“Hoping for a future is not pretending.” “It is. That’s all hope is. It’s a lie we tell ourselves so that we can break watches and pretend time is dead.”

There is a belief that all intentions have a soul. That every wish, every dream, can come to life if it is willing.

Disease is weaponized. It’s profited off of. Humans rarely search to cure diseases. There’s more value in treating someone for the rest of their life than in healing them once.

No one is better at killing people than people.

That’s why I bury memories. Living them once was enough. Reliving them is a destructive habit.

The last page doesn’t define the book.

“Hope is like waiting for the sun to rise,” he says, looking through his window, greeting the sky. “We don’t know if the stars will shine or if the sun will be here tomorrow, but I trust the stars. I trust the sun too.”

time will cease disease will fester death will die

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.

Kindness and resilience were born in the bodies of two broken boys, and all they ever wished for was more time to be together.

I ask him if there’s anything I can do, but it is a cruel question. Like asking a person holding on to a ledge what you can do from the ground below.