I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“How are you like this, then?” she asks, as if she’s accusing me.
“How do you choose to feel nothing so easily?”
“I do feel. I’ve been through this before, and it’s tearing me apart. I’m
just–
I love you. I need to be here for you.” I take her hand, the one
hanging limp off the side of the bench, dragging my thumb over her
pulse point. “I love them too, and I hold on to that–”
“Loved,” she corrects.
“Hikari. Love doesn’t fade when people do.” I reach across her chest,
to the black pattern of a moon crested as a partner to mine. “Time
will stop, disease will fester and death will die . ”
“They’re dead, Sam!” she yells, throwing my hand off of her. She
shakes, pulling herself upright by the bench’s back to put space
between us. To create distance. As if the mere touch of my skin will
burn through her like paper.
“Our enemies won. They took them and they’re gone now.” Hikari’s
hands curled around the edge of her seat, her eyes wide and
downcast.
“Coeur and Neo will never get to finish their story,” she says. “Neo
will never get to run his fingers over a cover with his name on the
spine. Coeur will never get to wrap his arms around him and smile
into his neck while he does.
Sony will never be there to give them her sweatshirts and she’ll
never get to bring those stories back to her kids.”
Her words beckon shadows I banished. They creep past the
threshold of what is meant to be a sacred place. They infest it,
patient predators, that have been waiting for this moment. They
crawl past Hikari. They already view her as something of theirs. They
set their sights on me.