I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

Sony smirked, as devils do. She grabbed Carl by the face and kissed
him with such force he stumbled back into the front desk. Freedom
comes in degrees, and Sony basks in whatever heat of freedom she
chooses. Once she was done with him she wrote her phone number
on his palm and followed us out.
The ocean graces us with salty scents laden in tart and as stars
skate over every ripple. We grace it with our scream-singing voices
and poor renditions of beloved classic rock songs. Windows down.
Music blasting. Not a care for what we leave behind.
With our remaining six dollars and ninety cents, we park the truck
beside the boardwalk and convince a short woman with a white hat
and a cart to sell us ice cream for half the price. She calls us
damned kids and shoves the cones in our hands.
Hikari points to the ocean reaching for shore, foaming white like a
beer bottle and misting like cigarette smoke. On the beach, parties
hold on to their end-of-season zeal. People dance beside on-thesand
bars with the familiar smell of actual cigarettes and alcohol.
Lapping at the ice cream, Sony gives her remaining to Neo. She
flings her dirty white sneakers off, leaving them on the boardwalk
and hopping down to the sand. Effortlessly, she blends into the
crowd of end-of-summer deniers.
Strangers look twice, caught by that brutal beauty. The roan layer of
hair and the dancing constellation across her nose. C hops down
with Neo on his arm. Strangers look twice as strength’s tiny body
moves in sync with compassion’s gentle beat. I take Hikari and her
sundress into the scene. She stumbles, but I catch her, interlacing
our fingers, dancing the only way I know, with her leading my hand.
Strangers look twice, not for any semblance of lost time, repulsing
illness, or death. They look twice at kids lost in the moment and in
each other.
Adventure becomes impatient, and we race to catch it, across the
beach all the way to a stretch uninhabited by anyone but the gulls