I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“I wasn’t supposed to be alive. I was just the background of a play
wherein people suffered.” My breath hitches, the recollections like
acid in my veins.
Blood and screaming and death crawl through them, so dense they
may as well be solid.
“I never understood why people had to die, and I thought that maybe
he held the answer.” A little boy who always said that things would
be okay. A little boy who saw the good in everyone and everything. A
little boy who lied to me.
“He taught me how to live even though I thought I wasn’t meant to.
He taught me about the world. He taught me how to dream.”
Those memories flow with ease. They’re soft in nature with hints of
faraway noise. His shrieky laughter in the distance, his shy kiss on
my cheek, the flushed skin on his face.
It’s always like that. The pain-ridden seconds are eternal. The year’s
worth of joy are fleeting. Another one of Time’s tricks.
“He killed himself in a snowstorm.”
C and Sonys’ faces fall. Neo doesn’t react. The little boy behind
them recedes into the shadows that stole him from me.
“It’s not like people say it is,” I say, wiping my face. “When he died,
he didn’t take a piece of me with him. He left a piece of himself
behind. A hollowness. A reminder that I could never let myself love
again without pain to follow. So after the storm passed, it was easier
to just pretend it never snowed at all. I stopped asking questions. I
stopped looking for reasons. I stopped caring about everyone. And
somewhere along the line, I stopped
trying to exist too.” Because all the corpses of my stars couldn’t
compare to the one that faded into the dark.