I Fell in Love with Hope(6)

Neo doesn’t just read stories, he holds them. He doesn’t just write stories, he becomes them. Most of the little things he writes ring true, give a certain chill, but then again, most little things he writes get erased or tossed away. That’s how it’s always been.

Sony places a cigarette between Neo’s lips, then another in mine. Gripping the cylinder firmly in his mouth, Neo cups a hand to shield it from the breeze. The lighter flickers till the embers catch Sony’s fire.

We’ve never actually smoked before. Or drank. Neo doesn’t inhale, rather, he observes, as I do, lets the scent tingle his nostrils, and watches the smoke rise, becoming one with the clouds. C and Sony don’t sip the alcohol bubbling at bottle caps. They lick the foam, tongues slapping the roofs of their mouths.

Our forbidden targets were ours the moment they lay in our hands. We’re greedy creatures, but not ungrateful. You don’t have to partake in destruction to admire the weapons.

Neo sniffles, caressing that book that never leaves his side. His copy of Great Expectations. It’s a constant, like a beauty mark or the shape of his nose. And it’s bent at the spine, just like him.

“Do you think people will remember us?” Sony asks, staring at the sky, toying with her tank. C caresses his scars and the lightning in them. Neo shifts protruding bones against his seat.

Injustice or tragedy, my friends are going to die.

So what is there left to do but pretend?

“I don’t know.” They all look at me. “Our ending doesn’t belong to us.”

Sony smiles. “Let’s steal our endings then.”

“That’s why we came up here, right?” C piles on. “We said we’d plan it today. Our great escape from the hospital.” Neo glances his way. The possibility of today, but grander, stirs between us. C shrugs. “What’s stopping us?”

The door creaks open.

“Here we are. You’re not supposed to come up here, but sometimes the kids like to–” Eric’s voice startles us. C nearly breaks his bottle by stepping on it while Neo and I toss our cigarettes so quick we almost set each other’s hands on fire.

The second we’re on our feet and turned around, Eric is already seething, but amidst the chaos, time slows. A familiar melody strikes a single note, turning all heads in the orchestra.

I go silent.

Yellow light emerges behind Eric’s frame.

And a sun hides behind him in the shape of a girl.





sunrise




I still see him sometimes.

He frolics, a boy who doesn’t feel the weight of the place where he lives. His hands toy with mine. He doesn’t hold things, holding my hands is the wrong word.

Can hands kiss? he asks. Questions are his favorite form of play.

I don’t know.

I think they can. His laughter rings in beats of three, all the way down to his fingers. Our hands are kissing.

He settles in his bed during the painful hours. Needles protrude from his body, tubes and machines with names too difficult to pronounce attached. He’s a machine of his own. A broken one engineers deemed doctors take a crack at.

His nerves protest, sharp, like a jab in the ribs. I see their symptoms in his twitching face, the shifts, and subtle groans. None inhibit his curiosity. His mind, while his body cannot, frolics all the same. He continues to play with my hands in any way he can. He laughs when his ribs allow it.

Needles are swords, he says. Pretending. His most glorious of games. Pills are gems.

What are gems? I ask.

They’re stones, he says. Very pretty stones. Some even shine. Like the sun.

Aren’t all stones pretty?

No, he says. His voice shifts with his body, into a territory where playing takes too much energy. He empties, little by little. The disease drains him and weighs him down.

I feel like a stone, he says, sinking into the bed.

I interlace our fingers and move along the joints so that he knows I’m still there. Our hands kiss.

You’re a gem then, I say. Like the sun.

He likes touching in the same way he likes pretending, asking, talking, even when he has nothing to say. It makes him feel like he has a greater purpose than just to be kept from death.

He smiles for me, but his face twitches. He shifts, rustling the sheets, looking out his window.

The sun rises every day, he says, light affectionately caressing his skin between the blinds. Do you think it rises because it fell?

He didn’t understand that I could’ve never answered him at the time.

I never knew any more than what he taught me. I knew that hands could kiss, and that I wanted to caress his face as the light did.

He was my light. He was my sunset. Violent with color. Submerged peacefully by the dark.

That was a long time ago.

He lives in my memory now. Buried. Rebellious, as he was before. He emerges, sometimes, in the corner of my eye, his laughter lost in a crowd, remnants of his questions still waiting for answers in the night.

The truth is, I don’t fear the night at all.

I live in it. Your eyes adjust, your hands become used to not being kissed, and your heart settles in the numb. The night isn’t the enemy I make it out to be. It’s the natural state of things when your sun burns out.

So color me surprised, when years after mine has long set, a beam of yellow rises from the stairwell and eclipses the gray…