A Love Like the Sun

by Riss M. Neilson

Maybe a soulmate connection isn’t something you just feel, maybe it’s something you have to be committed to building.”

annoyed by how often Issac and I have had to defend our friendship because people have seen romance where there wasn’t.

“If you’re a woman, it’s always stress to a doctor who can’t see past it.

“Not true,” Issac says. “For you, I’d bring down the sun.”

It’ll take courage, but you must unroot the big feelings,

Doctors are here to help, not to create complexes because of a system that gives them superiority.

Big love leaves a deeper hole once it’s gone.

“Grief is hard, and you did it for so long. And you’ll probably do it forever,

“Do you want to know when I started smiling again? It wasn’t because of another man or even because of how much I love the shop. It was when I realized your dad’s love was all around me still. Each time I heard a guitar strumming a song, or when tulips would rebloom in the spring, or any time I looked at you. You’re right, the grief doesn’t go away because it’s really just the extension of our love, and he loved me until the end of his life. I’ll love him until the end of mine. I don’t regret a second. And I’d do it all over again to feel an ounce of our happiness, even knowing we’d have a hard road ahead.” She kisses my forehead then lets me go. “Issac won’t regret it, no matter what your life might look like in ten or twenty years.”

“That your sickness doesn’t define you. And it shouldn’t define our relationship.

“Tell me that you can be brave when I’m not.” He pulls back to wipe the tears from my face. “That’s easy,” he says. “I’ll be brave for the both of us.”