I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“I’m not sure what to say,” I tell Sony. “I want her to know I’m sorry. I
pushed her away because I was afraid, but…” I graze my wrist.
“Sammy, you overthinking oaf!” Sony yells.
My head tilts. “Oaf?”
“A stupid, uncultured, clumsy person,” Neo says waving his
screwdriver around like a teacher with a ruler.
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, that does seem accurate.”
“You’re making this so much harder than it needs to be,” Sony flicks
my forehead. “What is Hikari to you?”
“She’s my Hamlet.”
“Your what?”
“They read Hamlet together,” Neo says. “Weirdos ruined the spine of
my only copy.”
“I want to tell her all the things I ever thought but lacked the courage
to say. If I’m a stupid, uncultured, and clumsy person, then I want to
be her stupid, uncultured, clumsy person because–”
I’ve never truly written. I’m like a cook who’s never held a knife. A
tailor who’s never seen thread. So how am I meant to tell you, Hikari,
that it’s because “–she made me dream again.”
The room buzzing with anticipating workers goes quiet. We’re
creating a safe haven. A place with beauty in the physical and
metaphorical, but it seems
even the furniture and memorabilia mull over what I have to say.
The hospital keeps on working just outside the checkered windows,
and through the blinds. The white noise and the oncoming night try
to creep into it with their uncertainty wearing silence.