I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

“I love you,” Hikari says, my hands clutched in hers like a plea of
their own.
“I don’t want to live without you.”
I pull her into me again, the weight of her body, the ridge of her
bones, and the plush of her flesh all burned into my memory. Forever
is an impossible dream, but it’s what makes you hold on this way. It’s
the hope of it that binds you to the other person with memories of all
extraordinary and all mundane moments you spent together.
“You will have so many loves, Hikari,” I whisper. “You will have a life
for far more than me.”
I see her with the friends she’s made, going to a beach and letting
the sea soak her sundress. Her laughter rings as she watches a
movie with her parents, drawing her favorite characters on random
surfaces. She will find boys and girls who excite her, who make her
stomach rise with butterflies, and who treat her as if she is the most
precious thing in the world because she is. She will have a family of
her own choosing. She will see the world and read and write for it,
listening to our old favorite songs with tangled earbuds.
She will think of me on the lonely days grazing her fingers over a
spine with Shakespeare’s name. She will ask me to haunt her, and I
will in memory and in vision. She will have hard days she doesn’t
feel like standing back up, but she will anyhow. She will take long car
rides with rock music blasting through open windows as the breeze
flirts with her hair.
I crush her to me, shuddering against the heat of her skin.
She will have a life for far more than me. “And I am so glad that you
held on for it.”
“What about you?” Hikari cries. “What about your life?”