Hope

“Sometimes I can’t write anything but endings,” she says.

I look at her. Bony, deathly pale. Dull eyes of eroded emerald.

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

She digs around in her purse. I know she’s searching for a cigarette. “I mean, when I try to think of a story to write, I can only think of ideas for the ending.”

“Aren’t endings hard, to write, though?”

“Not if you don’t have a beginning to connect it to.” She pulls out a pack, triumphant. Then her smile fades. “I suppose you haven’t got a light?”

“You’ll catch your death from those cigarettes,” I reply.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says with a shrug. “Everyone’s gonna die eventually.  What was that saying, again? ‘Nothing is certain except for death and taxes.’”

“I’ll say,” I grumble.

We sit on her maroon sofa. I sit on my side; Alyssa sits on hers. I lean back, and the leather wraps around my head, trying to suffocate me.

“You look ridiculous,” Alyssa says, voice chalky and low. She taps her fingers, crosses her legs. Her side of the sofa is covered with cigarette burns and dry piles of ash.

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” I allow my body to slowly slide down. I close my eyes. The leather softens the sounds of everything I hear. If only it could do that with everything else.

Alyssa stands. “I need to go to work.”

Her voice is soft, so soft, and I wish I could hear it more but I do not allow myself to. “Go, then.”

Her steps congest the small room. She leaves but her presence still lingers.

“Why don’t you leave me alone already,” I moan. “Leave me alone.”

My words are heard by no one but myself.

--

My calls remain unanswered. But she was always that kind of person, so I’m not worried. But when I read the text Alyssa sends me, my words are choked and mangled before I even think of them.

I write drafts:

<Text> That’s horrible. When did it happen? You must feel <delete y/n>

y

<Text> That’s…horrible. I know how you feel <delete y/n>

y

<Text> Look, I know it’s bad now, but it gets better, it really does. <delete y/n>

y

<Text> I’m sorry.  <delete y/n>

y

<save y/n>

y


In the end I send nothing at all. There was nothing I could write that she couldn’t see right through.

I decide to talk to her about it in person. It‘s better than just sending a text, anyway.

But I never get a chance to.

--

“Lissy, look at this.” I show her a piece of paper.

“Stop calling me that,” She says. “And what is that?”

“It’s a poem,” I reply. “By Emily Dickinson.”

“I don’t like poems. They’re too fancy for me.”

“Come on, I’ll just read you the beginning.”

“Fine.”

I start.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune-without the words,
And never stops at all.”

“It’s still too fancy.”

“Well, I tried.” I look down at my feet, slightly embarrassed. “Look, Lissy-“

“Alyssa.”

“Alyssa- I got you something.” I pull my hand from behind my back, my fingers wrapped around the stem of a small golden wildflower. “I picked this for you.”

“Thanks,” she says, taking it. “It’s, uh, really nice. Thanks.”

“Uh. I just wanted to tell you that you’re a really nice person and stuff and you’re a really good friend to me.”

She stays silent for a while. I’m glad she doesn’t talk, because that’s how I know she really does like it.

“Ethan, I have to go. My brother’s still sick.”

“Oh. Sorry. I hope he gets better.”

“I do, too.”

--

“Once upon a time there was a prince named Ethan and a princess named Lissy and they went to a magical swamp where there was a huge dragon and it was mean so they slaid it and they got rich and everyone lived happily ever after!”

“That’s a pretty bad story.”

“Why? It was good!”

“Good stories aren’t one sentence long.”

I groan. “Lissy, that’s asking too much.”

“It’s not that hard.”

“Alright then, you say a story.”

She stops talking and thinks for a second.

“Once upon a time there was a boy named Ethan and a girl named Alyssa.”

“Hey, that’s how I started mine!”

“Be quiet and let me say the story. They went to a small school in a small town. But one day, Alyssa’s brother got sick really bad. Her whole family was worried. They went to a doctor and he said he didn’t know when he was going to get better. When Alyssa went to school, she was really worried because her brother was so sick. But she made a friend there named Ethan. They played together every day after that, and Alyssa stopped being so worried.”

“…Okay, that’s a better story.”

“Told you so.”

I let a huff out. But I’m not mad. I’m glad she’s not worried anymore.

I’m glad I made her feel better.

I make a promise to myself. Whenever I see Alyssa’s feeling bad, I’ll cheer her up. That’s what I’ll do from now on.

--

Once upon a time, a boy named Ethan met a girl named Alyssa. He called her Lissy. At first, Lissy was shy and no one noticed her. But one day Ethan saw her after school and she was crying. She told him that she was really worried about her brother cause he was sick real bad. So Ethan told her that it would be all right, cause her brother would get to miss school and get ice cream and presents while he got better. That made Lissy smile and Ethan was happy he made her feel better.

But it was temporary. Lissy-or Alyssa, since that was what she wanted to be called- said that her brother was still sick. She stayed home a lot of times because she had to take care of him. Ethan gave her a wildflower, once. He didn’t know it, but when she got home she took it a pressed it inside of a book. It was so it would last for a longer time.

They started to meet together more often. Then, when they were 17, Ethan kissed her.

She didn’t talk to him for weeks after that.

But eventually she had to, though it was by text. She said that her brother had died. Leukemia, she said it was. But that wasn’t what distressed Ethan the most. It was the fact that she had been completely emotionless in the text. She didn’t even say that she was sad, or anything like that. She just wrote it flat out, like some sort of a jaded news reporter. This time, it was Ethan who didn’t talk to her.

They didn’t see each other until many years after that. But when they did, they were both different from the person the other had known before. Alyssa’s voice would crack under her depression, and Ethan had turned stone cold. When they were in the same room, they both felt themselves being asphyxiated by the cruel memories and the blunt silence. Alyssa’s brother was long gone, but she never forgot him. She wrote stories about him, stories of hope and friendship.

But every time, the hope was fake, gilded, and the friendship collapsed under the weight of consensual alienation. Her stories didn’t feel right. They lacked emotion. They sounded like a report of the day’s news, short and without feeling.

But that was only when Alyssa could think of the story at all.

Most of the time, she could only think of the ending.

And every time, her stories ended in the same way.

--

I finally open the package gathering dust at my doorstep. Inside it is a notebook, with its pages blank and yellowed. Upon turning the first page, something falls out and lands on my lap.

I pick it up. It is a pressed wildflower, browning in spots but still with hints of golden yellow.

Then I see writing on the front cover of the notebook. It reads:

Dear Ethan:

I should tell you, I’m going to die soon.

Are you alarmed? I bet not. I’m pretty old. Of course, you know that already.

Remember, back when we were kids, maybe thirteen or something like that, you gave me a yellow wildflower. Well, I pressed it, and here it is, in the same notebook I put it in. You know, I hadn’t opened this old notebook in years. But I always kept it with me. I did that to remember you. Promise that you’ll keep it too, and remember me.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune-without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”

-Emily Dickinson

Thanks for making me smile when we were kids. I really am grateful, Ethan. Though it might have turned sour near the end, I don’t regret anything.

So goodbye, and good luck, Ethan.


















I love you.