I Fell in Love with Hope(101)

“I’ll go with you,” I finally say. I push Sam back onto his haunches so that I am the one holding him upright. “Once you get better, we’ll go. Just you and I.”

“But–what you said–”

“I do belong here, but–” I stop to reconsider that the rules of my existence can be broken. I have never ventured too far outside these walls, but– “I’m still searching for those answers,” I tell him. “I want to search with you.”

“You mean that?”

“Yes.” I kiss him again. I kiss the corners of his mouth, his nose, his eyelids. Then I ask, treading a fine line, tiptoeing around my secret. A chest to be opened with a lock only I carry.

“Then… Do you want to know who I am?”

Sam smiles.

“I know who you are,” he says. “You’re a caring friend.” He kisses my lips. “You’re a meticulous nurse.” He kisses me again, sliding his hands under my shirt. “You’re a lousy card player.” His lips travel to my neck. “You’re a brave knight.” He grabs my waist. “You’re a loving dancer,” He pulls me down onto the bed. “And all your tomorrows are mine.”

—

Sam’s doctors identify his mysterious sickness a few days later. There is no way to know exactly how the disease was transmitted, but given Sam’s immunocompromised state, the prognosis isn’t promising.

Sam tells me it doesn’t matter. He tells me he’s survived everything since he was born. He tells me to hold on, that we’ll go on our adventure once he heals.

But as time passes, Sam’s condition doesn’t improve. I never leave his side, as such, even the littlest changes matter. If he walks straighter, if he spends a whole night without succumbing to coughs, if he can eat without nausea–they’re all minute existences of hope.

But hope is fragile. It isn’t infinite.

My butter baby dies in her third month of life. Sam chases me into the street, saves me from getting run over, holds me, shushes me, telling me it’ll be okay.

More people arrive at the hospital. More people I come to know and care for. More who wither into skeletons and ash. Every time, I return to Sam, whose skin becomes gray and whose strength wilts come fall. He holds me in the night. He shushes me, telling me it’ll be okay, telling me not to lose hope.

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.





soul bared to paper




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.

Hikari lies in my arms and though I vowed to protect her from small spined shadows, she has never felt lighter.

The blinds are drawn, thin lines of light drawn across the hills of our legs under the covers. I speak to her, tell her things, ask her things, but she rarely replies. She is cold no matter how close I hug her. Sickly purples ghost her under eyes no matter how many kisses I cast on her lids.

Her parents come to see her as much as they can. They’ve both taken leave from work, but Hikari doesn’t talk to them. She doesn’t speak to her doctors or to anyone else.

She speaks to me, I assume because she thinks I am the only one who understands. Because I am a prisoner of this place as she is a prisoner of her reliance on me.

I see it when she picks up the knife to cut her food and gazes at herself in the reflective plastic.

“Hikari,” I say. “Can you eat something please?”

She no longer recognizes the reflection, but she knows it is still her. Her fist squeezes the handle. The knife shakes.

I draw patterns over her knuckles when she loses herself in those thoughts. I ask her to talk to me. Sometimes she does, shakes her head, and puts the knife down. Others, she grips it harder, falls further, and tries to slash at her wrists.

She struggles as I stop her, her breaths huffed from her nose, her jaw clenched. I take the knife and throw it on the ground so she can’t get it back. Then, I hug her, cupping the back of her head as she fists my clothes and pushes me away.

She hits me in the chest, the strikes dwindling with her strength. Then, once she is still and quiet, I loosen. She slowly parts from me, muttering an apology.

Later, once she’s finished eating what she can muster and thrown it up, I help her wash herself. I redress her and apply ointment to her scars. Then, we lie together in her bed, beneath the covers.

“Did you ever find the answer?” she asks, her voice this hoarse, sad thing. “Did you ever find out why people have to die?”

I shift on the bed so that my mouth is against her neck as she faces away from me.

“No,” I whisper, caressing her hands, touching the leather and crystal of the watch on her wrist.

“Maybe there isn’t one,” she says. “Maybe death is as pointless as life.”

The dream I shared with Neo denounces that, but I can’t tell her. She needs to be heard, not fought. So, I wrap myself around her, pressing my forehead to her back, trying not to focus on the prominence of her bones or her words. I focus on her breathing, her heartbeat, any sign that she is not a corpse.