I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

she keeps is the black stone I gave her. She traces the white band
with her finger.
“Is it always like this?” she asks. “It just happens, and we get no say
in it?”
Laughter sounds in the far distance. Hikari catches the silhouettes of
those strangers playing on the shore. They run into the water,
shrieking from the temperature. One hugs the other, splashing and
spinning. Their laughter fades in its travel, like a song playing too far
away, a story too far to read.
“I didn’t even know her very long,” Hikari says, tucking the stone
back into her pocket. “It feels like I started to love her and never got
to finish.”
Love isn’t a thing that’s ever finished, I want to tell her. It’s not a
chronological feat. Her love for Sony is based in gentle affections,
loud
adventures, and the little pieces of friendship people tend to
overlook. It does not end simply because we had to say goodbye.
Hikari sighs. When she does, she feels lighter somehow, not quite as
full as before.
Grief can be destructive, a parasite that needs expulsion, water
rising till you become an overflowing dam, but like most terrible,
necessary things, it can be shared. Time is kind with grief. It takes it
from you, piece by piece, till the sorrow is a song you remember the
beat of but no longer hear.
I take Hikari by the wrist, coaxing it from her pocket. The stone is still
in her palm. I snake my hand down her arm and intertwine our
fingers so that the gem can be cradled rather than clutched.
“Look Sam,” she breathes. With our joined hands, she points at the
evening turning to night. The sky kisses our angry sea with gold and