Two centuries ago, a hospital was born. Men built it of stone, lumber, and faith that could move mountains. Within it, something came to life past the realm of understanding. A creature of sorts, a soul made of the dreams the people who built the hospital held onto. That soul gave me this story, and now I pass it onto you.
The hospital’s infancy was long. It was difficult to care for, to upkeep. As it grew and evolved, it became a place everyone knew. It became a place people came to be saved.
Mine workers and tailors with cuts and broken fingers arrived, patched up within an hour’s time. They left, sore, but grateful. Though it was but a bit of space with no human body of its own, that soul within the hospital saw joy in their expressions as they waved goodbye. Others came in need of help. Some were too withered to survive, so that lonely soul held their hands till their breathing ceased. It always made the hospital sad having to say goodbye that way.
Soon, though, it met children. Children were the most beautiful of them all. They were loud, colorful, and attracted to all things they did not know. Children, it learned, suffered from curiosity just as it did. They laughed at anything and ran across its halls to play, pure and kind and hopeful to the bone.
It loved them all, that creature. It loved the babies whose fists curled around fingers and cooed in their parents’ arms under its roof. It loved their sleepy breaths, jaws slack, dreams amok in their wild, untamed minds.
Time went on. Children grew. They became people. And if the soul was lucky, they lived long, happy lives and returned to it with babies of their own.
Of course, that luck had to run out.
Disease never came before or after. Disease was a staple of forever, but disease was undoubtedly in a coup with violence. Disease took the children with its bare hands. Disease murdered babies in their cribs before they’d had a chance to catch light in their eyes. It murdered miners, tailors, nurses, and doctors too.
They were all taken away, given to Death; a whale with a wide open maw, never satisfied. It swallowed the hospital’s people. Its children. Its babies. And all it could do was watch as the years went by under Time’s control.
The older that hospital grew, the more tears stained its floors. Mothers’ tears, fathers’ tears, lovers’ tears. It became a place of last resort. A place where people come to lose those they love. Their bodies were given to the ground and their memories to grief.
It remembered every suffering stranger, but decades went by. Then a century. There came so much pain that it forced itself to forget. It tried not to feel at all. No pain, no warmth, no joy. Only morbid curiosity forever searching for a reason to all that carnage.
It was that way till a child, unlike the rest, emerged.
He was an eternal being told by God, but he was also just a boy. A lonely boy who reached for hope’s hand when it was lonely too and as they found solace in each other, that soul, that creature, gave itself a means of being with him.
No matter how many died, no matter how many lives it couldn’t save, it had Sam. It created a body made of flesh and bone. It made itself tangible, real, becoming a part of the world it’d spent so long watching.
Sam was its first love. In one way or another, all first loves are lost.
Sometimes death is more merciful than life, and he chose its mercy over mine, it said.
Although it didn’t just lose him. It lost everything attributed to him. Everything they shared. So, it cried atop the pain of memories buried in snow. It fell in love with Sam because it thought they’d be together forever.
Forever is an illusion for mortal things, but time felt sorry for me, it said. Time patched up my wounds, dried my tears, and did the best it could simply by passing.
Time let it forget, but that soul kept Sam’s name. It kept its curious body. It walked through its greater frame, the one made of wood and stone, and it searched for answers in those who came through its doors. It chose not to feel as it chose not to suffer, and it chose not to want as it chose not to lose.
It never let love in again.
Of course, you can’t control that. Whether you’re a human, a book, a cat, or hope itself, love is not a choice.
It was just like falling.
It fell in love with Resilience.
Resilience is tough, skinned with taut language made of iron. He was forged by hate, dented, but never broken. Beneath the impenetrable, fragile bones built his body. He was small, not broad as a shield should be. None of that mattered though. Resilience is in the mind. He was made of poetry and broken things. Of stubbornness and dry humor. Of memories written, not as proof of survival, but as proof that he lived.
It fell in love with Kindness.
Kindness was always meant for a brittle, bleeding heart. Perhaps not very bright, nor very ambitious, kindness grew, never decorative, but always present. He knew, carrying resilience in his arms, hugging passion around the belly, and caressing hope’s missing color that he was needed. The melodies he shared drew smiles greater than artists ever could.
It fell in love with Passion.
Passion was a goddess. She ebbed and flowed in the sea, her waves carving cliff sides. Her humor alone could take over the world. Grinning ear to ear, she spouted foul words, pretty words, all the words she wanted. Shame cowered in fear of her. Passion gave kindness friendship on which to lean, resilience a reason to laugh, and hope a fellow flame to dance with.
And hope. Hope is the bittersweet companion of loneliness. It lives in creatures of the forever, a caring home with more curiosity than sense. It omits little white lies and steals here and there. It gets lost. Lost in those who need it. Hope tastes like a day at the sea and holds your hand with a bruising grip. It is deep and afraid and hollow and brave.
Hope is the dirty white sneakers on otherwise ever bare feet. The sweatshirts we share. The promise poems torn at the edges. The headphones with always knotted wires and the dances on cold rooftops. The boring, comfortable hum of machines and the cool, thrilling beaches. The shadows against a protruding spine caressed by your lover. The heat of a kiss and icy fingertips against reddened cheekbones.
The little moments.
The everything moments.
The moments before the sun chooses to rise.
Though some shadows may ruin the world, there are people, people like them, who survive and crawl from the wreckage. The people who created this home, the people who continue to study and roam and practice to save one another. They are more than hollow shells to sate death’s hunger. They are full of passion, of resilience, of kindness, and of immeasurable hope.
My hope, my love was born from that wish.
It was born so that suffering strangers have a place to belong. To keep the night and the mirrors away. To let artists storm the halls and sketch as many smiles as they can. To make time feel endless. To make the despair that lives in us feel just a little less alone.
Walking out into the street, I blend into the crowd of new strangers and see the possibilities in each and every one of their faces. They do not know your names, my friends, and despite the world’s greatest efforts, it will not remember you.
But I will.
I do not leave you behind. I take you with me into this new chapter of life beyond the pages. I will tell all my loves of you. I will tell my children of you. I will die and before I do, I will read this story once more and remember that your names and your stories are immortal.
And to my love, to my Sam, before my last breath, I will look up at the stars and remember your letter.
To my eternal sun,
My love for you did not begin.
It did not end.
What we share is not a chronological feat.
It is a promise of its own.
It is the basest form of trust.
It can be broken and rebuilt.
It can fade and reignite.
But it cannot be stolen.
Not even by Death.
We were an eclipse.
A moment the sun and moon met.
A flash of light wherein hope reached for despair and they embraced whether it be for a single moment or eternity.
Tonight, I will climb to the rooftop thinking of you. My ghosts roam beside me, a missing lung, a missing heart, and a missing mind returned by the night.
I will see you step out into the streets, yellow blending into the crowds, and I will reach for you with only one dream. If in your next life, you decide to find me again, with another name, in another body, I will give you a home. I will abide by my promise.
I will fall in love with you every time…
So will I, my love.
So will I.
