I Fell in Love with Hope(71)
“Neo,” C says, making room for our poet to see. “Look.”
Beneath the crown of Sony’s collarbones, etched onto the meeting place of her heart and lungs, a pair of wings spread above words of promise.
time will cease disease will fester death will die
Neo’s jaw slacks, his eyes gone soft.
“It’s for you,” Sony says. “It was the first thing you ever wrote in our Hit List.” She meets Neo’s gaze. In it, every single gasp, fit of snorty laughter, and tear shed that Sony gave Neo’s stories lives. “You always said you wanted just a little piece of you to be immortal.”
Neo’s hands shake around his stories. His babies that have been torn, taken for granted, mistreated, thrown like corpses in his face–he remembers them all. Because his sea is thick with suffering and we are who he chose to row with.
Neo drops his story into C’s arms, stifling a sob. He covers his mouth with a bony hand and, without hesitation, he hugs Sony.
“Silly crybaby,” she whispers, embracing Neo as he cries on her shoulder. Sony reaches into his (or really her) sweatshirt pocket, removing a crinkled piece of torn paper. “I promised I’d get you happy tears, remember?” she says. “I’ve been telling you from the beginning that you’re a pillar. Did you think I was just teasing?”
“You’re a stupid idiot,” Neo blubbers, his tears soaking her shirt.
Sony hugs him back, pressing kisses to his head.
“I love you too, Baby.”
—
“Hikari, hold my hand.” C huffs out a breath. He braces in the hydraulic chair much like Neo does when C operates a vehicle.
“Deep breaths, bud,” Hikari teases, abiding by his request.
“Don’t laugh at me,” C warns.
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re laughing.”
“You’re a funny guy.”
“You ready?” Carl asks.
C squeaks. “No. Can you count down from three?”
“He’s ready!” Sony says, hopping up and down, using Carl’s shoulders as a pogo stick.
C took his shirt off for the process, bearing the circuitry of his body. Along the faint memory of muscles, his heart pulses beneath the branching outlines of his veins. Thunder and lightning arisen from a gentle organ.
C sighs, throwing his head back. Sony tries to distract him from the spicy ultrasound with dramatic readings of Neo’s manuscript.
On a particularly grueling passage, audible reactions over the quiet buzz echo through the room. Unbeknownst, Neo looks around and realizes the whole shop is listening in, artists too. He swallows down disbelief, suppressing a smile I never knew could grace him with such brilliance.
C gets a rendition of Neo’s quote in the same spot as Sony and a pair of earbuds over the text. Neo goes next, same quote, an open book crowning the words.
Hikari and I watch from a distance. She removes her sweater to go next. Self-consciousness pulls at her bandages and tucks her forearms behind her back. I take her hands in mine, tangling our fingers together. Standing at an angle, I conceal her arms between us so no one can see.
“You never told me what this scar is from,” I whisper, tracing the thick, jagged line crossing from shoulder to the apex of her breasts.
“When I was little, I had imaginary friends,” she begins, “I chased them all around the forest in my backyard. I climbed the boulders, the trees, all of it. One day, I climbed a little too close to the sun and–” Hikari blows up her cheeks, flicking the length of her white line. “When I got older, I had real friends, but they didn’t feel real. I felt closer to my imaginary teddy bear. I never connected with anyone, or I guess, no one ever connected with me. Anyway, it was clear that I was the problem, so for every person I met, I acted a little different each time.”
As if identity should be rewritten to the whims of others. A thing to be solved rather than nurtured.
“Over time, I realized that creating a new personality for every friendship is a temporary effort. You can pretend as long as you want, you always revert back to who you really are.” Hikari licks her lips. Her fingers fidget with a piece of lint on my shirt. Her eyes stray from the present, sadness not unlike the kind that took her the night she told me of her childhood ghosting over her face. “So, I just started acting like myself. A lot of people thought I was weird, but I liked just being me for a while. I reopened this scar climbing the same exact tree.” Hikari tries to laugh, but the joyful memory is tainted with sourness, a little bit of a lie stitched over the truth.
“It grew a branch,” she says. Her joy fades. Her eyes unfocus, drifting behind me to the sight of our friends.
Regret coils in her gaze, originating from the ravines beneath her bandages. All the other little branches that riddle her body send pinpricks up her spine.
“You know I don’t like hurting myself, right, Sam?” she whispers.
“I know,” I say.
“It’s like a release,” she goes on. “Like everything becomes too much, and I can transfer the pain somewhere else and–” She looks down at her hands as if the blood of another, pools between her fingertips rather than her own.
“They’re only scars,” I say, kissing the edge of her wrist. “Like the essential parts of us kept only for the gazes of mirrors and lovers.”