I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

can scrounge. I see their shadows folding over her, claiming
ownership.
I won’t let them.
Casting aside the smudge of red on Hikari’s cheek, I feel the rim of
her glasses against my fingers and the ridge of her nose. Then, I cup
her face and press my lips to hers.
They’re soft yet chapped at the edges, full and remnant with her
smiles, her smirks, and all her teasing. I kiss her, long and indulgent,
like drawing a breath after drowning. Her glasses brush against my
brow. Our noses don’t quite fit.
But it feels right. It feels pure. It feels like the warmth we shared in
our past lives.
I part from her with noise, caressing her face, letting the heat of my
breathing keep her from the cold.
But Hikari doesn’t look at me.
She doesn’t say a thing.
Time’s mocking laughter echoes at my back, telling me I am too late.
The cardboard box sits beside me, watching, on the threshold of our
distance. Within it, I see all I should’ve appreciated while it was still
mine. I hear the door creak to the roof, Hikari’s light shining onto a
gray rooftop. Her mischief escapes her lips as she parades her first
stolen spoils, me her accomplice. She sits boyishly on Neo’s
windowsill, marking our tether with a potted plant, her first gift to me.
She dances, holding her hands up to give me a sense of comfort, a
yellow blanket on her bare legs. Her affection drifts tangibly, her
gratitude following on its wing as she held my first gift to her heart.
I dig through the box, a pair of scissors at the bottom. I pick them up,
all else blurred and muffled. Without method or rhythm or pattern, I