I Fell in Love with Hope(2)

“Thank you.” My fingers tangle in his hair. “For the everything.”

“Thank you.” Hurt etches his throat. He presses himself against me even harder, like he could disappear into me if he tried. “For making me want to chase it.”

He tries to laugh again, but it’s not the same laugh I’ve always cherished. The laughs I cherish echo. I roused them from his chest when he lay with needles in his veins. When he squeezed my hand, desperate to hold on to something real. Now, his laughter falls flat. It ends abruptly rather than fades.

“My love,” I say, my voice half lost. “Why did you come to this bridge?”

The street lamp flickers. The stars start to fall with urgency. The dark creeps into our picture, gripping the edges of the halo.

He bites down. His eyes squint shut as snow beckons his tears.

“I’m sorry, my sweet Sam,” he says, his breath catching, his fingers wrinkling the coat like sheets on my back. “I wish I could keep pretending with you.”

Our castle stands behind us, listening. As he cries into my shoulder, I only feel every moment he ever opened his eyes when I thought he wouldn’t. I feel the smiles we shared when death decided to give him back to me, over and over again.

So, I can only whisper, “I don’t understand.”

He presses his forehead to mine, streams burning trails down the frosted edges of his cheekbones, and a fear I used to know too well takes the place of his embrace.

“I’m happy you told me your secret,” he says, tears catching on the curve of his smile. “I’m happy that you’ll keep living even when I’m gone.”

He kisses me, snow and salt between our lips.

He kisses me like it’s the last time he’ll ever have the chance.

“Remember me,” he says. “Remember that just because the stars fell doesn’t mean they weren’t worth wishing on.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, but the kiss is over.

His touch has already fallen from my face. He’s already turned around and walked away. I reach for him again, to interlace our fingers, to pull him back as I always have, but death takes his hand instead.

“Wait.” His footprints fade beneath the white, erased. “Wait!”

He doesn’t hear me. He only hears the night calling from the other side of the bridge with the promise of peace.

“Wait–Please–” My tears find fruition because no matter how hard I try, I can’t follow him.

The shape of our memories thin, disappearing from the street lamp’s gaze and off into the shadows.

“No, you can’t–you haven’t–” I shake my head “–you can’t go yet-you can’t leave–you–”

You.

My light, my love, my reason.

“You’ll die.”

The fear digs between my ribs. It breaks my body, my lungs, and my heart.

When the dark swallows the last of him, reality comes to reap, and pain lays heavy in its hand like a scythe.

The snow turns into a storm. I try to gather the dancing flickers in my hands and somehow send them back to their sky. My knees fall to the earth, burning from the cold. My castle watches me with pity. My tears rain into the river, my whimpers turn to sobs, and my memories turn to nothing.

My stars are falling.

And I can’t save them.





yellow flared eyes




Imagine a bomb chained to your wrist.

It’s been there most of your life, a noise akin to a heart monitor sounding day and night. A countdown. A countdown, by the way, that you can’t see. Look at your bomb, hold it up like a watch. All that’ll stare back at you is a blinking red light and that barking beep to accompany it. They are reminders that this bomb will go off. You just don’t know when.

That’s what waiting to die is like.

A bomb sifts through your veins by the name of illness.

You cannot unhinge it. You cannot destroy it. You cannot run from it.

Time, Disease, and Death are rueful mechanics that way. They enjoy crafting nooses out of fear, and they love playing games. Shadows their dresses, they curve over your shoulders with eerie fingers coaxing you into the dark, taking your body, your mind, and anything they please with it.

Time, Disease, and Death are the greatest thieves in the world.

Or they were.

Then we came along.

“Now,” Sony says, wearing sunglasses with a price tag still dangling from her temple.

“Now?” Neo looks up from his book. He raises a lip in disgust, the mere thought of action off-putting.

“Now,” Sony repeats, chin up, chest high, like the captain of a ship heading to war. “I’m going in.”

“Won’t we get caught?” I ask, looking around the gas station empty of all but three idiots and the register attendant flipping through magazines.

“We’re definitely getting caught,” Neo says. He shuts the book only for Sony to smirk down at him through the peripheral of her soon-to-be-stolen sunglasses.

“Why would we get caught?” she teases.

Neo snorts. “We always get caught.”

“Today is different. Today is on our side,” Sony proclaims, taking a breath, deep and dramatic. “Can’t you taste it, Neo? How sweet the air is?”