I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

frown. He holds in a laugh, his lips twisting.
Once the exam is over, he sits up, and covers himself, muscles
shaky.
I run to his side.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yes, my love,” he says. He kisses my nose. “I’m in the mood for a
laugh, aren’t you? Let’s go play cards with Henry.”
“Okay , ” I agree, helping him off the table and back into his clothes.
—
Children who experience illness can harden. It isn’t a response to
pain, it’s a response to their life feeling stretched, thinned into a
cycle. Memories blur into each other. A year in hospital can feel like
ten. Maybe that’s why so many patients have the wisdom of an old
man and the temper of a child.
Henry tells me that war is a lot like being sick. There’s a sense of will
I make it out of this or won’t I. A lot of pain, a lot of boredom, and
camaraderie among the hurt and bored.
Henry tells me he remembers the exact weight of his rifle and how
odd it felt in his arms as he ran with a bouncing pack on his back.
The air was nearly black, he says, full of smog so thick you could
feel the tar in your lungs. The
sirens and ammunition shot through his eardrums about as harshly
as the blood stank.
The shadows he trudged through hold on to his memory like a bump
in an otherwise flat road. He turns to me, his head limp on the pillow.
Then, he asks if that’s what dying feels like. Running into the dark,
not knowing whether light exists on the other side.