Write Me for You

by Tillie Cole

To the dreamers and romantics who always find light in the darkness.

“Love,” my mama said, “is the most powerful thing in the world. It can heal and it can grow in the most unlikely of places. When all is lost, love blooms.”

“I might only be seventeen, Junebug, but I know what it’s like to have little time left. And as much as I want us to come out of this place in remission, cancer has taught me that nothing in life is too fast. Time is relative. How I feel about you…” He paused, and I could see him trying to find words. “It’s not about time. It’s not about what right or wrong. It’s about connection and wanting to be with you every day.” He shrugged. “Does it feel too fast to you?”

When you’d been told you were dying, a catalogue of missed opportunities played in your head like a movie, showing you things you wished you’d done earlier, making you mourn things you might never get to do. Cancer taught you that death waits for no one, and you had to cling to life’s joys while you could.

“I get that we may have problems, issues, fights even.” I pretended to shudder at that, and June smiled a little. “All couples do. But I will tell you one thing that I know is fact.” June tilted her head. “I will choose you every time, in every universe. I choose you for me completely.” I nudged my chin at her notebook. “Write us falling out, struggling, but don’t for a second believe that that would be it for us. Will it be difficult at times? Yes. But nothing has been as difficult as fighting cancer, and I think we’re doing a pretty fucking epic job at that—despite the immunotherapy not working and our cancer progressing, that is.”

“If you need to express your feelings, worries, and doubts about our happily ever after by giving us tough times in your writing, that’s fine. It won’t upset me in the here and now. But know that I will never give up on us. In this life or the one you are creating in this notebook.”

“I believe that what happens next is beautiful and serene and filled with peace and happiness. No pain, and all ailments will be cured,” Pastor Noel said.

“He said that star would have long burned out, yet its shine remains to us all the way across the universe. Beautiful and lighting up our skies.”

“Never lose this,” I said when I pulled back. “Never lose this happiness I can see on your face right now. Your purpose, the reason you write, the reason you survived—it makes the world a better place, Junebug.”