I'll Kiss Him Like Forever Is An Option, part one
The sickness is quiet, like the way winter creeps in. First with a chill, then with a silence so heavy it makes your ears ring. I carry it in my bones, in the soft tissue of my ribs, in the tiny thread between heartbeats that whispers: it’s not much longer now. I don’t say a word. Not to my friends. Not to my extended family. Not to my boyfriend with his warm brown eyes that search my face like they’re looking for something to hold onto. I smile, and I lie. I say it’s treatable. I say it’s manageable. I say the medicine will help, and that the tiredness is just from school, and that my bones ache because I slept weird, and not because they’re rotting from the inside out. I tell them the falling will stop, the vision will fix, and the pain will be gone. I tell them what was found is going to heal and is smaller than it sounds. I tell them I’m fine in a tone I’ve rehearsed so many times I almost believe it myself. Almost.
The truth is, I’m dying. Slowly, softly, like a candle left to burn in an empty room. I’ve decided they don’t get to know. Not because they don’t deserve the truth, but because I don’t want to watch their faces fall apart. I don’t want to memorize the grief in their expressions like I’ve memorized the way my hands shake when I’m alone. I don’t want pity. I want memories to stay warm, untouched by the frostbite of goodbye.
So I’ll laugh with them under the sun, even though my skin bruises from the light. I’ll dance in kitchens, even if my legs are begging for rest. I’ll write love songs with trembling fingers, kiss him like forever is still an option, and lie beneath the stars pretending I’m not slipping through the cracks of time. I’ll go on pretending until my body gives out, and even then, maybe they’ll just think I was tired. Maybe they’ll never know the truth was blooming beneath my skin like a field of bruised violets. Maybe they’ll say I was strong. Maybe they’ll think I believed I would survive. I won’t. I just want them to.
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