I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“Do you love me?” She motions to the hospital below us. “Do you
love any of them? Any of the people you claim to watch over?”
“I’m not supposed to love,” I say. “I’m not supposed to even exist.”
“Are you that afraid?” she asks, only now it’s a dare. A push. “Are
you that afraid to lose again?”
“I already lost everything. I will always lose everything. No matter
how many times I try to steal it back.”
Hikari cups her hands around her nose and chin in the form of a
prayer.
Horror works across her face. She looks down as if three graves sit
between us.
She looks at me as if I’m holding our friends’ hands as they lay down
inside them.
“That’s why you spend so much time with them,” she says. “That’s
why you do so much for them.”
I already know what she’s thinking.
“No. No, that’s not true.”
Hikari adopts my anger and takes it as her own. “What are they to
you, exactly? Lonely dogs in the back of a pound whose days are
numbered?”
Disgust works through her tone, thinning her eyes heavy with
judgment.
“You’re just as bad as people who look at sick kids and see lost
causes only alive thanks to pity.”
“You don’t understand!” I yell. “You don’t understand because you
haven’t only existed in a world where people rely on hope like