The Poets

My mother used to tell me there were steps for falling in love. It was her favourite story to tell me – probably because she wanted me to be able to believe that love truly existed, even after the man I was supposed to call dad up and left in the middle of the night. She wanted me to believe that out in the world, somewhere, someone would be the one for me. That magic truly existed.

Every Friday night, after she got home from her part-time job at the pub downtown, her second job, she would come into my room after the babysitter left, and she would sit on my bed and talk in a soft voice and tell me stories of a magical love, one that would make the sun smile down on earth and make the stars shine a little brighter. I would pretend to be asleep, but she always knew I wasn’t.

She told me that if I followed the steps properly, I would find that one person – my person. And while I always knew she was making them up for my benefit, they kept my hopes alive that there was still good in this world.

Step #1: Find someone who is so beautiful, they make your heart skip a beat at the sight of them.

The first time I see her, she’s bursting through the doors to the lecture hall, dripping wet. I almost laugh at the sight of her – drenched in rain and yet still pushing her hair out of her eyes, as if to recover from running through the rain late to class. Raindrops fall off her eyelashes into the growing puddle of water at her feet as she takes in the class, who are now all staring at her. She takes the closest open spot – a few seats down from me, in the row ahead. I watch as she rings out her hair and tries to brush through it with her fingers. It’s long and brown, and even wet, I can tell it has some curls trying to hold their shape. From that moment, I know she’s come straight from the stars.

Step #2: Talk to them. Find out their name.

             At our next lecture, I sit next to her. Amelia. It took me all week to figure it out, but I finally found someone who knows who she is. This time, her hair is piled on top of her head in an intricate bun. A few pieces stick out here and there, and I feel the urge to reach up and tuck them in. Halfway through the lecture, her elbow knocks her pencil case onto the ground. I lean over the pick it up, placing it in her outstretched hand. Her face turns red.

              “Thank you. Honestly, I’m such a klutz sometimes…” she smiles up at me, and for a moment, I could swear there was no one else in the room but us. I decide then that I will do anything to earn that smile again.

The next day, I see her in the dining hall. She’s eating alone – although I could bet that’s by choice – and looks thoroughly enthralled in a book. I get my chicken wrap and coleslaw and kick out the chair across from her. She glances up at me through strands of hair that have fallen in her eyes.

“Hey, you’re in my economics class, right? I’m Anthony.” I wait until she grins before setting my food on the table and sitting down. “Yeah, I remember you from yesterday. I’m Amelia.” I already knew that. I don’t say it out loud, because scaring them away definitely wasn’t one of the steps. It’s not long before we’re sharing halves of our different kinds of cookies they rarely have in the dining hall and talking about the things we miss most from home. What I don’t tell her is that I’m not even sure I have a home anymore.

             Step #3: Get to know who they are. Who they want to be. What they want to be.   

             I imagine her smiling up at the sky, just like I am, as I twirl her hair around my finger and wonder ‘how is it possible of all the people on this earth, she chose me to spend the afternoon with?’. I can only partly stop myself from grinning like a bloody fool every time I see her. We lay with our heads next to each other on a blanket in the grass, beneath the biggest tree on campus. The leaves are red and orange and are like a canopy over us, protecting us from the world surrounding us. Because here, in this moment, nothing else matters except for this girl beside me.

             “Where do you want to go most in the world?” She asks me. Even though I can’t see her face, I imagine her big brown eyes blinking up at me in that questioning way they do.

             I pause to think about it for a minute. “Wherever is furthest away from home.” I finally say. “But, right now, in this moment, I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

              “Ok, sappy much?” She says with a laugh. A handful of brightly colored leaves land on my face. “Your turn, weirdo.”

             “What do you want to do? Not just for today, but for the rest of your life. If you had to graduate right now, and pick a job – any job, what would it be?”

             The sound of her breath quickening makes mine do the same – if only in anticipation of what she’s going to say. She doesn’t say anything for a minute. “Everything.” The word is whispered, and I imagine it as a spark, coming out of her mouth and captivating my entire being. “I want to try anything and everything – do as much as I can do in a single lifetime. I want to see the world, I want to help people, I want to live.”

             We breathe in sync for a moment – a perfect moment. Her breathing is heavy and quick, as if talking had tired her out. “Well, now I can’t say anything after that answer. It was poetic.”

             “I think the poets would disagree.”

             “Who are they to decide? Ok, serious question. On a scale from 1-10, how good looking am I?”

             She rolls onto her stomach and tugs the drawstring on my hoodie tight, pulling it down over my face. I stand up and pull her up too. I grab her hand and pull her toward the center of the common, where someone has raked all the leaves into a huge pile. We run to the middle and fall down, the leaves swallowing us up until we truly are the only ones here.

Step #4: Tell them you love them.

One week, when she doesn’t come to class, I know something’s wrong. I text her, and when she doesn’t answer, I slip out the back of the lecture hall and call her. She still doesn’t answer, so I walk to her dorm. I knock, but no one answers, but when I call her again, I can hear her phone buzzing inside. I would never barge in, but by now I’m worried and I try the door and it’s unlocked so I slowly push it open. Her roommate is gone, but there she is, lying in bed, being swallowed alive by the comforter. At first I think she is asleep, but then I see that her eyes are open, staring at the blank spot on the wall across the room. I stay by the door when I whisper her name. When she doesn’t so much as blink, I step closer, until I see her eyes – no longer wide and full of wonder. They’re hollow, as if someone had sucked the life out of her. This is what scares me the most – because what is Amelia if not full of life? I fall to my knees beside her bed and take her hand that’s hanging off the edge. I brush the hair out from her eyes.

“Amelia. Can you tell me what’s wrong? I want to help. Please.” I wipe the streaks that tears have left on her cheeks with my thumb.

Her eyes drift to meet mine. Her voice is a barely a whisper when she speaks, as though she’s scared that speaking it out loud will make it true – whatever it is that caused her to lose hope like this. “It’s back.”

When she doesn’t say more, I cup her face with my hand. “What’s back?” I ask softly, afraid to add to the pain that’s so evident in her eyes.

She pulls away, sitting up and leaning against the wall. She squeezes a pillow against her chest and pulls her legs up, hugging them so hard I fear she might break apart. I climb onto the bed next to her and sit just like her. She turns her head and rests it on her knees, as if she doesn’t have the energy to hold it up anymore.

“Cancer. It’s back. Worse.”

She waits for me to say something, but the breath is knocked from my lungs, and suddenly I’m waiting for air that doesn’t come. “How…?” I manage to choke out.

She squeezes her eyes shut, as though it pains her to relive the story. “I missed the entirety of sophomore year. Tumor… in my lungs. It went away. It was supposed to have gone away.” A tear slips down her cheek. I catch it with my thumb before it can fall. “Last month, when I had the flu, I never really got better. A week ago, I went into the hospital, to get a scan. I didn’t think anything of it. I only went for my mom – she was worried. But they called me back with the results and…” her voice drops to a whisper again, “it’s back. It’s spread.”

“How long?”

“4 weeks.”

A strangled sound escapes my throat. I’ve just found her – my person – and now, she’s going to be pulled away from me. She starts to sob and I wrap my arms around her, holding her tight against me. We sit there for hours. Neither of us says a word, just sit there, clinging together as if it’s already been four weeks and it’s our last day.

             Finally, she shifts so that she can gaze at me with those wide brown eyes, except now they’re red and puffy. She cups my face with her hand. “Anthony. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to stay. You could pretend you don’t know me. I wouldn’t hold it against you. I don’t want you to have to go through this too. It would hurt too much. It can’t break you too.”

             In response, I tighten my grip around her. “I am not going anywhere. I will be with you until the end, whoever soon or far away that may be, and I promise you, we will get through this together.”

             Silence. For a minute.

“Anthony?”

             “Yeah?”

             “I love you.”

             I grin. “I love you too.”

             Step #5: Show them that you’re there for them, always.

             As the next weeks pass by, I do everything I can to slow them down, but it’s not enough. I can see her fading away. Soon she will be nothing at all. Nothing more than a memory. A memory that will surely leave a hole in my heart. Her parents and sister come and stay in an apartment a block from the hospital. Every time a new test or scan is done, all I can think is ‘maybe today is the day. Maybe she’s healed.’

There’s never good news.

Soon, they hook her up to a machine to help her breathe. When she starts coughing up blood, I think of when I was in a hospital room exactly like this one, thousands of miles away, watching my mother go through the same thing, watching her deteriorate into nothing, just as I will watch Amelia. Maybe I’m not meant to have love. Maybe everyone I love will die.

She writes in a notebook all the time, even when her hands shake from the effort of holding up the pencil. When I try to read it, she laughs and sticks it under her pillow. “You’ll see soon.” She promises.

Step #6: Buy a ring that captures the starlight in their eyes.

It’s been two weeks and four days since she got the news. I go out in the afternoon, while she’s napping. Her sister promises to call me if there’s any news. The streets are bustling with people. I wander up and down them until I find a jewelry store. The ring I find glistens in the sunlight and looks like it holds a thousand stars inside. As soon as I see it, I know it’s perfect. Later that night, I wheel Amelia up to the rooftop garden. I made sure it was the perfect night, clear so you can see the stars. I sweep my arms under her and carry her over to the bed I made of pillow and blankets.

“I thought you should get to see the stars…”

             She tilts her head at me. A sad smile spreads across her face. “One last time.” She finishes. Sighing, she leans her head on my shoulder. “I’m not afraid of dying. I thought I was going to die – when I was 16. But I got another chance.” She looks over at me. “And I’m really glad I did. I met you. And you grew flowers in the deepest parts of my soul.”

             I press a kiss to her lips. “You really are a poet, you know that?”

             She smiles lazily, the kind she used to smile – before we had anything bigger than midterms to worry about. “I think we’re both poets. ‘Are poets not just fools with fancy words?’”

             I reach into my back pocket and pull out the ring box. Her mouth falls open at the sight of it.       

             “We both know – you know I’m not going to-”

             “Amelia Jane Larson. Ever since we met, you have healed the deepest parts of me that I didn’t even know needed to be healed. You have shown me what it is to truly be alive. We might not get the chance to grow old together, but that’s okay. I want you to wear this as a reminder that even though it might not seem like it, you’re still every bit alive as you were before. And… as a reminder to wait for me, in eternity.”

             She grabs my face in her hands and kisses me as if it’s the first time we ever kiss – or the last. “Anthony Lucas Macdonald, I would love nothing more than to wait for you in eternity.” She pauses. “But you have to promise me something too. You have to live for me. Do everything I couldn’t do, because I want you to be able to truly live. And then we’ll be together again.”

             We hook pinkies like we’re children and laugh. “I promise.” I take out the ring and slide it onto her finger. I try to ignore how thin and pale her skin is, just wanting to enjoy the moment. We lay down on the makeshift bed and point out constellations.   

Step #7: till death do us part

It happens so quickly. One minute I’m lying next to her on her bed, listening to the sound of out hearts beating nearly in sync. The next, the heart monitor starts beeping and I’m clinging on to her, begging her to stay with me, to hold on a little bit longer, to take another breath, just one more breath, for me, but her beautiful wonder-filled brown eyes are already closed and her lips are a sickly blue and her skin is nearly translucent and I watch as the last shattering breath goes out of her and then it all stops, the beeping and the nurses’ shouting and the sound of her heart beating in tandem with mine. It all stops and then I am shaking, I am shaking and clutching the body of the girl that changed the entire trajectory of my life. I hear someone screaming and it might be me, but I can’t be sure because all I know is that she’s gone and that’s all that matters. She’s gone and now, I all I have are memories of people who once loved me.

Later that night, after they’ve taken her away and somehow I’ve found my way back to the garden, I pull out her journal. Somehow, I know she wanted me to read it. I flip it open to the first page, which is dated two days before she found out the news.

‘Dear Anthony,

             Even though they still haven’t called me since my scans, I know I am dying. I can feel it. The familiar feeling, which I haven’t felt since high school, slowly creeping back into my body. So I’ve decided to write down all the things you have to do once I’m gone. All the places you have to see and the things you have to experience. And maybe, once you’re done, you’ll have lived enough for the both of us. I think you were right with what you said about the poets. I think we all have a little poet inside us, in the way everyone sees the world differently. Now, I need you to go find out how you see the world. And when you’re done, we’ll be together once more.’