I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

the far distance.
Neo and Hikari write and draw in the Hit List. They mark each stone,
shell, island, and ship. The wind weighs in on our conversation,
flipping pages in disagreement and tickling our noses when it is
pleased.
My friends laugh into its calling, filling page after page, not a dull
moment between them. They smile, hug, kiss, run, speak, sing,
shout, swim, play, create, and love without constraint.
With a pencil between her teeth, Hikari walks me to the foamy edges
of the shore and hands me a drawing. On a loose piece, three kids
dance together amongst a nameless crowd. Their expressions are
their own, but they are real.
I stare at it, ghostly fingers dragging over my friends’ faces. It is a
single moment, but through her gift, it is engraved in eternity.
I smile. Because it is a single moment that cannot be stolen.
When Hikari turns toward the sea, the breeze flirts with her figure.
Her dress catches on her curves, the wet fabric stuck to her legs. My
hands roam to her hips, pulling her to me, paper in hand.
I trace the lines of her face. She bites her blue lips and inhales the
newborn air that very well could’ve been carried from across the
earth. I mimic her. Our new tattoos touch, a spark of electricity
exchanged by our hearts.
“Hikari,” I breathe.
She runs her fingers up my scalp, the watch on her wrist carrying
grains of sand against my neck.
“Yes, Sam,” she whispers, and surrounded by the people we care
about, I realize that this is what it was always supposed to feel like.
Our enemies have no claim to this place.