Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
~~~~~OOO~~~~~
Thursday XXXX,
For the longest amount of time, I have thought of telling you this. But I was, and still am, a coward. It is no justification for what has come to pass, and lesser still, for what I shall say; and so, once more, I shall write the words that lie trapped between my lips. I only pray that this time, instead of burning it, I have the courage to let this letter remain in the folds of this notebook.
You gave me this on my birthday last year, and I have borne it upon my breast pocket all along - a good luck charm. Presumably, it has worked. Unni - my comrade whom you would have loved to meet - tells me no one has caught as few bullets as myself. That should be good news. It is not.
I'm happy for you - I truly am - and I would have you know, your happiness is worth the universe.
All around me are young people - frenzied and terrified - either eager to serve their country, or busy convincing themselves that they are. At first, I did not understand the hype. We are all humans, and those on the other side spit on us and call us curs in the same contemptuous way we do them. Even in cruelty and violence, we are one. But three days into this, and I read your letter - bless the hand that wrote it - and I realized the call of blood.
It is awkward, even perhaps perverse, the way I feel for you, more so because of our shared childhood. I loved you like one loves a friend, and then I loved you some more, until I would leap across oceans and rip the earth asunder for you. But your parents matter more, and their choice is the law, written in the iron finger of God. I love you still, so I stay away. There is little to do anyway, when your beloved hands you an invite to their wedding. I have no resentment. The world may not know of me, I belong to no history book, nor to the memory of youthful minds, but I hope you will remember after, even as a friend, I loved you. I will, all my meager life, till a bullet do us part. All else, it does not matter.
Sincerely yours,
The Soldier.
YOU ARE READING
At War
Romance"Revenge by young men is considered victory, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose know better." -Chief Seattle This is an anti- war epistolary novella written for ONC 2022. Prompts 5 and...
