Hana Pt. 2

             Hana loved to read and read she did of poetry and prose that was so beautiful that made Joshua’s heart melt. The titles she read were beautiful: ‘Veritable Silence,’ ‘A Woody Fire and the In-Between,’ and ‘The Tear Well.’ And sometimes it would be that Joshua would fantasize about reading to her or her reading to him. His fantasies would be elaborate; he’d lie in bed while she’d be standing, or sitting in a chair, and enunciating the syllables clearly and loudly. His mother never read to him as a child. She’d get real passionate at the real, passionate bits and parts and he’d cry a little, inside and outside, and he’d wipe his eyes real quiet and slowly stare at her with the look of a child; she’d keep on reading seemingly oblivious to his emotional reaction. He’d cry and cry and cry. Then at some point, she’d have finished the poem and seen his face and went over to the bed to wipe away a few of his tears. She’d say something like, ‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry. It’ll be okay,’ and lie next to him and bear-hug and spoon him. His face will have been facing the right side of the bed and he’d have turned his body to the left toward the wall; but after he’d have calmed down he would turn again to face her; he’d slowly move his pupils toward hers and her face and know right then and there that he loved her. For that moment, he would feel utterly and completely unalone; he will have known self-actualization in that actual moment; he will have felt completely and totally fulfilled; that he was part of a greater humanity and earth and cosmos in the moments next to her; that they were no longer Sapiens but Homo Geneous. The same—the same—they would be the same. No difference—no difference; they were one and all and all were one and nothing mattered and everything mattered and all were fools and fools were none—they will have loved.