I give credit to Children’s Hospital. They do try. There’re kites and elephants painted all over the waiting rooms, as if one has to do with the other. Monkeys and bunnies dance alongside them, their talk bubbles wishing for our health and happiness. I stare at them, kicking my foot up and down. You’ll get well soon, the elephant says.

My brother’s eyes slide over to my restless foot. “Good idea,” he says, and crosses his right leg to do the same.

I know he’s trying to make me laugh, so I do, but I keep my eyes on the elephant. Making light is how Matthew gets by, and sometimes I’m okay with that, but I can’t decide how I feel today. Matthew’s got a morbid sense of humor, the nurses always say.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d tell you that my parents aren’t breathing. They are. Their chests are barely expanding against their shirts. Dad’s eyes are following a smaller child playing with the painted trees on the walls. She presses her palms against the bark and squeals. Her parents ignore her. I think she’s the healthy sibling, the other child is thinner and hasn’t woken up. My mom is watching my older brother, making sure he’s alright. He’s fine. He’ll get well soon, the elephant says so.

I watch my brother’s foot. He’s stopped paying attention to it and picked up his GameBoy. I want to ask him if he’s said goodbye to his toes, to his heel, to his ankle. I don’t.

Hang in there, says the monkey. I’m fine.

“How much longer?” I ask Mom.

“It’s a hospital,” she replies. There are stones in her voice and they weigh down her words. I reach into her purse without asking and pull out a Sharpie and a piece of paper.

“Here,” I say to Matthew, “let’s draw.”

Matthew picks up the Sharpie but leaves the paper. He goes for his right leg with a smirk.

“Cut…” Matthew drags his words as he writes, “Here.”

He marks an ‘X’ below his knee.

Somebunny loves you, says the bunny.

_

The Oncology wing has a little gift shop to the right of the check-in center. Mom used to buy me a gift every time I’d come to visit, a small bear or a chocolate bar, but then we kept coming here and she stopped. She lets me wander on my own, which I like because it makes me feel old. I count doors of the inpatient wing and smile at the kids tugging their IV poles like a stuffed animal behind them. I sit in the parents lounge and read magazines about celebrities, pretending to find it interesting, like my mom does. I get a Crunch bar from the vending machine with my own allowance, and I only sometimes ask Mom first. Someone painted bees over the vending machines that say “bee happy.” I am.

I like sitting in Matthew’s room when it’s just the two of us. Other people in there might mean doctors, or nurses, or needles. The chemo makes him vomit sometimes but I don’t mind catching it in the bowl. Then we watch TV or play video games or he asks what happened at school so I can tell him. His IV beeps every forty seconds, and a nurse comes in every ten minutes, or sooner if he pushes a button.

“Someone at school today asked me if you looked sick,” I say, and Matthew scoffs.

“What kind of question is that?”

I shrug. “People.”

“Tell them I’ve grown another ear, and it’s started talking.”

“That would be a mouth.”

“No, it looks like an ear.”

“Where would it be?”

“The leg stump, for sure. Prosthetics are gonna be a nightmare.”

We laugh. It colors the room, it lets in light.

“You don’t look sick,” I say, “you don’t look any different.”

“Nice try. No hair, no leg, literal tubes coming out of my chest. Even my eyelashes fell out.”

“But you look good.” I mean it, I wanted to say. You’re fine. Get well soon.

Matthew smiled. “I’d look better with a talking ear.”

_

Mom says the phantom pain is only bad for the first couple months, that once his brain understands it doesn’t have to manage his right leg anymore it’ll stop sending signals to it. Until then, the sensation rips my brother open like claws cutting down a cloth. Some days he says he feels like his ankle is being twisted around and his hands grasp at an empty space below his knee, trying to remind his brain of what isn’t there anymore. Other days it’s a pinch of the heel or a twinge of the toes. It’ll pass, Mom says, over and over. Hang in there.

I start living with other families from school so my parents can spend more time at the hospital. I roll a red suitcase to class and make up schedules with my friends of who wants to claim me for a week. Parents pass me off to each other with my red suitcase, a crumpled note of my mom’s instructions, and a tight smile. Somebunny loves me, I think.

When I do get to go to the hospital, Matthew and I play air hockey in the game room. It’s not the same as before, because he has to lean on the table to keep his balance. I beat him more often now.

“Am I getting better or are you getting worse?” I shoot the puck across the table and Matthew deflects it.

“I’m getting worse,” he wobbles a bit and leans forward.

“Only at air hockey.”

“Well, you do literally have a leg up on me.”

We giggle. I glimpse the catheter tubes that hang by his shirt collar. His crutches and IV pole make him look like he’s made of metal. He’ll get well soon.

_

Four months later and Matthew hasn’t stopped screaming.

“I’m sorry,” he says before I can push his bedroom door open. “I keep waking you up, I’m so sorry.”

“I get it,” I say, coming inside. I feel his head and push a thermometer at his mouth. “Here.”

“No,” he moves his head away. “I don’t want to go back to the hospital.”

I watch the skin above his ears, splotchy and bare. He looks tired.

“I know.”

"I'm fine. I'll be fine." His breathing picks up. He thinks I don’t notice, but I do.

I hand him the thermometer. “Well, hey. If you go there, you’ll get well soon. The elephant says so.”

A smile stitches itself through Matthew’s lips. “Can’t disappoint an elephant. She’d never forget.”

That’s true, but the saying hasn’t told me if elephants are always right. Matthew dangles the thermometer from his lips. Hang in there. I’m fine. He's fine. Somebunny loves us. I see his eyes draw their water, but then he remembers I'm there and he stops, he smiles, he shrugs. He's got a fever. I wake up our parents. They think I don't notice them moving faster, but I do. Bee happy. We’re children. We’re not.

I saw my best friend last night for the first time in 3 months. The second time in 7 months from when we first met. He said, "when you hug me- it's like you're holding on for dear life." I said, "I know if I let go- I won't see you for a long time." He said, "it's nice." I'm afraid to lose him. I love my best friend.

Maybe attempting to understand the beautiful but foreign language written across our hearts is where we’ve gone wrong. We could be meant to leave it alone, not meant to explore the tugging in our chests we feel repetitively each night. It’s like trying to make out shapes in the dark, but a warm darkness, like a summer night when you’re outside and not alone. Home can be everywhere, but I only feel it with you. I think you’re brave and I want to feel brave too. I don’t feel anything when most people are around; no presence, no life, no curiosity. But I’m curious. I’m beginning to understand that curiosity leads to a warm, contented torment. I wonder, and my sense of what is concrete crumbles. When you feel the weight of tears creeping under your eyelids; the tugging, every night while your eyes are wide; the pain in everyone’s eyes, half hidden and ancient; then you know.

This didn’t begin with us, and it won’t end with us.

This heart

melts under the pressure

provided and given by your touch alone.

This heart

beats way faster,

even if it can hardly master the path

between

loving

and surviving,

like a crazy trapeze artist

balancing the adrenaline

on the thin rope of love.

This heart

is selfish

and needy

and even if it cares

it's still greedy,

When

a soul is starving,

the body craving

and the molecules

of our existence

raving on

for the things

that it cannot deliver.

This heart is greedy...

Once her friend told her, "No matter how much you accomplish, more desires will follow. Having every desire fulfilled is not the answer but to savour what you have and keep working towards your bigger goals without expectations."

Only then she realized, she had never loved her life. She had always waited to be someone first and then would love herself. Apparently, she will never get satisfied with the someone she always has wanted to become.

The day she decided to cherish the life she has, she became that someone.

ebony stars in a sable sky

wet my weary eyes 

i long for you

my crimson dove

to brighten my world again 

before you all was blues and greens

violet petals and sun

but since we met

my turncoat heart

bleeds black when you are gone

continue, wretched masquerade

char me through the wait

secret hearts

lovers' arts

a path of glass we tread

torrid, our sequestered love

clawing at my soul

senseless fears

bleeding tears

till tender lips console

i long to rip the veil, proclaim!

true hearts for all to see

two souls shine

ending repine

masquerade fading...to memory

"YOU ATE THE BERRIES! How was I supposed to make mother's famous fruit trifle without the blasted BERRIES?" A woman's shrill voice resounded through the near empty diner.

"Oh this again! I bloody well said I was sorry, didn't I?" Another raised voice, this one a males warm baritone, met the first.

From where she stood, a redheaded waitress dressed in a uniform that was far too small for her, courtesy of her perverted boss, had a clear view of the argument.

She watched as the woman ignored him and continued on with her incessant nagging, while the man sat looking extremely weary.

The waitress mirrored his weariness, fiddling with the top of her uniform which was fit to burst at any moment. Light flashed off her name tag, illuminating the engraved 'Ginevra'.

The arguing couple had been sitting at the booth since the early dinner crowd that was usually composed of senior citizens. It was now half past nine.

"Bloody unbelievable!" The man continued to grumble. They were the only people left in the tiny diner. With an impatient sigh, Ginevra glanced at her watch for what was surely the fifth time in the last minute. The cook stuck his head out the delivery window motioning her to hurry it up and shut the place down. It was finally ten o'clock.

Ginny, as she preferred to be called, made her way over to the bickering couple and cleared her throat from where she stood at the mans elbow.

"Do you mind miss?" He grumbled indignantly, "We're having a domestic."

"We're closed," Ginny ground out, fighting every urge to toss down her apron and never come back to this horrid job.

The woman at the table tossed her a dirty look at the unwelcome interruption.

Nevertheless, her counterpart rose, reaching for his billfold.

With the door securely locked behind the still bickering couple, Ginny leaned against it.

She was fairly certain she'd still be able to hear them clear up the street. She turned the open sign round to closed, running a hand through her hair, the vibrant red sparkling in the dull lighting. Slowly she made her way to the table, grabbing a near by bus tub and began sorting the mess. It seems that any notion she harboured about the man having felt badly about their behaviour to leave her a large tip was unfounded. She glowered down at the scattered coinage, cursing the nesh tosser and his stroppy cow.

She looked left, right and centre, hoping to spot a straggling bill. No such luck. With a resigned sigh she lugged the full tub back to the kitchens.

"What are those two chuffed about?" The cook queried as she entered the kitchen, tossing

her towel down.

"Oh he nicked one of her chips. She wasn't happy about it."