I'll Kiss Him Like Forever Is An Option, part three

There are nights I want to tell him. Nights I want to break down completely and admit that this doesn’t end the way he thinks it will. I imagine his face if I said it out loud. That I’m dying, that no medicine will undo it, that the slow fade has already begun. I imagine him trying to hold onto me harder, as if strength could rewrite biology. I imagine him looking at me with grief where love used to be. I can’t bear it. So I lie. I lie by omission, in the way I kiss him goodbye with too much desperation, in the way I memorize the way he smells, in the way I look at his hands and think of the time I will no longer be around to hold them. I lie by letting him dream, by laughing at our future plans, by keeping quiet when he talks about growing up together. I lie because I love him too much to let him lose me before he has to.

     Every time he carries me, I pretend it means I’ll rise again. That my body isn’t betraying me. That we’ll walk into some kind of miracle without realizing it. He wraps me in blankets, brings me water, gives scratches in circles into my back like he’s drawing some invisible symbol for healing. I pretend it’s working. He needs me to pretend. Maybe I need it too. He knows everything except the only thing that matters. I will not survive this. If he ever finds out, it won’t be from my mouth. He’ll learn it in the silence I leave behind.

Copyright © Amanda Nolan | Year Posted 2025

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