I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

More people arrive at the hospital. More people I come to know and
care for. More who wither into skeletons and ash. Every time, I return
to Sam, whose skin becomes gray and whose strength wilts come
fall. He holds me in the night. He shushes me, telling me it’ll be okay,
telling me not to lose hope.
I wonder, in his arms, how something as intangible as hope is lost. It
cannot be misplaced. It cannot be thrown aside. That means, it must
be forgotten.
Forgetting is an essential part of grief.
soul bared to paper
T he broken heart. You think you will die but you just keep on living
day after terrible day.
~
Loneliness is a soft-spoken abuser, singing lullabies, you are alone,
you are nothing, you are empty.
Hikari lies in my arms and though I vowed to protect her from small
spined shadows, she has never felt lighter.
The blinds are drawn, thin lines of light drawn across the hills of our
legs under the covers. I speak to her, tell her things, ask her things,
but she rarely replies. She is cold no matter how close I hug her.
Sickly purples ghost her under eyes no matter how many kisses I
cast on her lids.
Her parents come to see her as much as they can. They’ve both
taken leave from work, but Hikari doesn’t talk to them. She doesn’t
speak to her doctors or to anyone else.
She speaks to me, I assume because she thinks I am the only one
who understands. Because I am a prisoner of this place as she is a
prisoner of her reliance on me.