I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“I know you miss them,” I say, wiping her tears with my thumb and
cupping her face. “I know it feels like they were ripped from us by the
roots and I know it hurts, but this torture you feel, this intense feeling
that it will never get better, it will end.”
I smile a sad smile that I know she will not catch, but that I know she
will understand.
“One day,” I whisper, “You’ll look back on your time here, and you will
cry, but you’ll smile too. You’ll smile thinking of Sony’s snorty laugh
and Coeur’s tangents about music, and Neo’s rare hugs. You’ll
remember our nights dancing and kissing with Shakespeare and
every moment in between. You’ll survive and feel your scars and
remember that even if it was the hardest thing imaginable, you lived
through it. You lived through it, and you met three beautiful people,
and you loved them as long, and as much as you could.”
“Sam,” she cries.
“Hikari.” I press my forehead to hers as I did the night the shadows
ripped out her hair and her dreams. When I part from her, she looks
at me with the same pleading I once did to her in another life.
“Why do people have to die?” she asks and all of her hurt escapes in
those few words.
There is no cure for grief. It is the most tangible yet intangible of
pains because only one thing can make it livable. Forgetting is not
an essential part of it.
Time is.
Time stands beside me now, its own shadow. My enemy that has
also been my companion. It bends down and casts a gentle palm
over the thin layer of Hikari’s hair. It does not promise a future, but it
promises a past that cannot be stolen. It promises that it will go on
for her.