The Potential of a Day

Chapter 25: Live

Live

          With my reading of the last lines, I run my fingers over the printing; somehow elegant and messy; the loops, where, in printing, there shouldn’t be place for any. Written in a familiar hand. Even in high school, her handwriting never changed all that much. It will never change. These words, will never change. But somehow, even though I acknowledge they were written by a child, I know that, even had she lived, these words would never be changed. My pain was clouding my judgement, but reading this essay now, reading it in her voice, a sample of which I’ve held away for safe keeping in the back of my mind, everything becomes clear. What she would have wanted for me. And what, despite losing her, I want for me. 

          When finally I look up from the sheet of paper in my hands, there are tears all down my face, down my throat; I struggled to read those last few lines, my eyes were brimming in tears. Once I’ve run my arm across my eyes enough times to see, Leo meets my eyes. The boy is grinning, an arm now hung lazily over the banister of the lamp room; there’s a smug look to his face, as though he’s won; proved some sort of a point. Though I’m sure it’s obvious they are tears of joy, I feel somewhat mocked, what with him grinning at my sobs. “So, you’ve read it,” Leo states, “so what do you have to say?”

          “Sephie she…she wanted me to live. She wanted me to be happy,” I’m pressing the sheet to my chest, folded it around it like a piece of paper myself. My whispering, is more to myself, than as an answer to Leo’s question, but he seems to take it as one anyway, “uh uh uh, I asked what you had to say, not what Sephie said.”

          “What is there to say? Sephie put it somehow I simply can’t refuse; that she would want for me, exactly what I would want for her. Happiness.”

          “And are you?” I glance up at him, as he repeats, “are you happy?”

          “Yes,” I say it without hesitation, and then, with just much certainty, but a little more difficulty, I speak the words of newfound truth, “I…I want to live.”

          Leo steps away from the rail, back towards me; extends me a strong hand, pulling me to my feet. The two of us stand in front of the search light, two figures cast onto the horizon, the light glancing off his features. I lift my other hand, and Leo takes it, running a smooth thumb over the back of my hand. And there, with light dancing in our eyes, and wind playing through our hair, Leo says, “then what are you waiting for?” And, with that, I move, with giddy animation, forward, and into his brusquely spread arms.

          And then, I’m kissing him. It’s just a little kiss at first, on the cheek, a sweet juvenile gesture. But his finger moves, to just below my chin, guiding my lips towards his. I close my eyes, and for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I trust myself. For the first time, in far too long, I adore the simple act of feeling. His lips aren’t how I ever imagined lips, I’ve never actually kissed anyone before tonight, they’re better. Warm, and safe, and moving ever so softly against mine, as if forming some word that doesn’t exist in spoken tongue. The language of life and love.

          We break apart, but neither one of us in discomfort or regret. I look into his eyes, and there is the simple ambience that I feel in my own eyes.  

          He’s smiling. And I am too. A smile I can’t seem to move from my lips, can’t blink from my eyes. Because I’m not smiling at some dumb joke, not smiling to prove anything, to anyone. I’m smiling, for a smile’s original meaning; happiness.

          And the world could end. Or, more realistically, my life could end. But I would be alright. Even if my life ends now, I’ll be at peace. And that has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to die; I don’t. And maybe that’s the idea. Maybe that’s the whole point, to deal with wanting to die, to survive, until you want to live. Maybe it’s the wanting to live, that you have to find, before dying.