I Fell in Love with Hope(116)

It fell in love with Passion.

Passion was a goddess. She ebbed and flowed in the sea, her waves carving cliff sides. Her humor alone could take over the world. Grinning ear to ear, she spouted foul words, pretty words, all the words she wanted. Shame cowered in fear of her. Passion gave kindness friendship on which to lean, resilience a reason to laugh, and hope a fellow flame to dance with.

And hope. Hope is the bittersweet companion of loneliness. It lives in creatures of the forever, a caring home with more curiosity than sense. It omits little white lies and steals here and there. It gets lost. Lost in those who need it. Hope tastes like a day at the sea and holds your hand with a bruising grip. It is deep and afraid and hollow and brave.

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.

Though some shadows may ruin the world, there are people, people like them, who survive and crawl from the wreckage. The people who created this home, the people who continue to study and roam and practice to save one another. They are more than hollow shells to sate death’s hunger. They are full of passion, of resilience, of kindness, and of immeasurable hope.

My hope, my love was born from that wish.

It was born so that suffering strangers have a place to belong. To keep the night and the mirrors away. To let artists storm the halls and sketch as many smiles as they can. To make time feel endless. To make the despair that lives in us feel just a little less alone.

Walking out into the street, I blend into the crowd of new strangers and see the possibilities in each and every one of their faces. They do not know your names, my friends, and despite the world’s greatest efforts, it will not remember you.

But I will.

I do not leave you behind. I take you with me into this new chapter of life beyond the pages. I will tell all my loves of you. I will tell my children of you. I will die and before I do, I will read this story once more and remember that your names and your stories are immortal.

And to my love, to my Sam, before my last breath, I will look up at the stars and remember your letter.

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 basest 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 will see you step out into the streets, yellow blending into the crowds, and I will reach for you with only one dream. If in your next life, you decide to find me again, with another name, in another body, I will give you a home. I will abide by my promise.

I will fall in love with you every time…





So will I, my love.

So will I.





endword




He said I’d make a good doctor.





In retrospect, I know he said that to make me happy the same way I told him while he was confined to a wheelchair that he’d make an excellent horseback rider. We made fun of each other like that, although even on the phone, he could never do it with a straight face and he could never not follow it with an ‘I’m joking’. It’s rare to find people so inherently nice who’ve suffered that kind of pain. Pain is a nasty animal of the body’s own creation, just like an autoimmune disease. It tends to destroy, but whatever it destroyed in him, it was not his kindness.





When he died, it blindsighted me.





At first, it felt somewhat unreal and then it graduated into a physical pain I couldn’t stand. I remember laying on the floor, wanting to scream every time I thought of his smile.





My kindness, what fickle pieces of it were left standing, was pulled out by the roots. For years after, I plunged into a streak of cynicism and meanness and the general belief that life was a sort of sick joke and not worth the ablutions of compassion.





I kept him a secret from everyone, save my mother. Somehow, that made it feel like I was preserving him. I tended to lie to people who asked about my past because that’s what children do when they’re hogging something. He was my first true experience with the kind of death, and he was my first experience with love, and I wanted him to remain something of mine. With my adolescence, that compulsion faded, as grief tends to. My aggressiveness and pessimism were replaced by a general coldness which I find is just an inherent part of me that I must accept. I retain my ability to laugh, my ability to empathize, and more importantly, I learned how to be kind.