I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

if she could crawl into time’s body and tear it apart from the inside if
only to emerge where her friends are still alive.
So she feels her pain, her loneliness, the excruciating feeling that
she is dying, but at once not dying soon enough. She grapples with
her guilt and her fear and her love for me. They torture her until she
can no longer bear it and must feel the pain with blood. When I stop
her, she resents me. She resents me for keeping her alive. Then, it
begins again, till all that’s left of her to torture is her mind thinning
away with her body.
“It can wait,” I say, laying under the covers with her.
As Hikari falls into sleep, a selfish fantasy of mine rears its head. I
dream that Hikari and I become one person. I dream of being so
utterly close that we melt into each other. That way, I could take all
this pain she has, every drop of this misery, and nurse on it. I could
rid her of the shadows. I could bear every single suffering note till her
smiles and her mischief and her curiosity and all the things that are
hers return.
I beg the possible to gift me this one impossibility. I beg as I once
begged the dead to haunt and wallow in the silence. Because if she
and I were one, then I could never lose her.
“I know you’re hurting, my Hamlet,” I whisper, trembling, I hold her so
tight. “But please, hold on. Just hold on for me.” I kiss her again. I
kiss her till I realize she has already become as empty as I used to
be. I kiss her till it feels like my fantasy could come true and even if
she dies tonight, I will pretend I have died with her. I will crawl
beneath the ground as soil is spread onto our bodies and the dark
submerges us. I will hold her as she decays to bone and then to ash
and I will love her till time takes the world away and my curse is
vanquished by its end.
“Please, Hikari.” I kiss her like it’s the last time. “Please, don’t leave
me yet.”