I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

I think, reveling in the feeling of Sam’s lips laying affections on my
neck.
“I dream of this,” I say. Sam’s curiosity looks at me through his
lashes. “I dream of you and I like this, together, tomorrow, and every
tomorrow after that.”
“My love,” Sam says like it’s a statement of its own, a kiss that’s
spoken rather than had. “All my tomorrows are yours.”
—
Sam stretches his neck back against the table, blowing out his
breath as the doctors untie his gown. He lays horizontally, an object
of examination. Sam has marks on his body, patches that rise above
the skin. They crack and bleed in the cold. They become sore and
raw when he bathes.
The men surrounding him talk to each other as if Sam isn’t there.
They are his mechanics, and his engine needs tending to. Their
hands run over his screws and bolts, picking out inconsistencies and
mulling over how to remedy them.
I sit across the room. The doctors obstruct my view of him, like a
kettle of white vultures. His face is all that’s visible, or rather, a
disconnected version of
it. Like I do, Sam attempts to look at himself from another point of
view. The ceiling, the walls, some inanimate part of the room he
used to give a soul.
Being naked, poked, and prodded at–none of it is strange to Sam.
He’s undergone the routine since he was little. It’s a norm. But the
shame never goes away, he says. It isn’t a logical thing to feel, yet
he does. He feels exposed, leered at, vulnerable.
Working on a swallow, Sam eventually looks to me. I smile as if it
could make any of this easier for him. Sam sticks his tongue out. I