I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“Can I kiss you?” she asks. Her voice is permeable. It bleeds into my
heart and coaxes me closer. Her seat shifts on the lonely stretcher
as she leans just enough to tease.
Our lips chose each other the night they first sang Shakespeare. Our
hands chose each other then too, mimicking dances and postures,
creating mirrors in pairs. They don’t dare to meet, they don’t dare to
touch, but they wonder. They remain in this one intermediate
moment of what if.
What if I do touch her? What if I caress the stray yellow strands on
her cheek and drag my fingers over the pulse in her neck? What if I
do kiss her?
What if I start with the cupid’s bow perched just beneath her nose
and work my way down, worshiping her with every breath?
I wonder, would she be real then? If I closed my eyes and leaned
into the sun, would it set me afire, or would I finally feel the light on
my face?
I shake, unable to decide. Hikari’s mouth is just barely open. Her
eyes are half-lidded. Her head tilts so that if we took that final step,
we’d fit together.
I want her to see herself as I do. She wants me to see the world as
she does.
Every time Sony failed to draw breath, or Neo collapsed over his
own feet, or C couldn’t hear a word, I used to accept it and look the
other way, but it’s not like that anymore. It hasn’t been for a while.
Now, with every reminder that my friends are going to die, there she
is.
She is not a recycled version of someone I once loved. She is a
rhyming line in the poem of my history.