The archive of the forgotten

a little letter

WARNING:DARK THEMES

To Angelica, my only angel,

It's so cold without your embrace. I miss you so, even though it has only been a few months. Sometimes I wonder how it is possible that I'm not deaf yet. Every single day there are so many grenades and shots that if you'd think about it I should already be dead. The hope of seeing you keeps me alive Angelica. I really thought that I would be back already. But alas we need to survive being apart for just a bit My angel.

Normally I would not complain, and this is also not complaining but you should see it here. The weather has been bitterly cold. Evervday more and more soldiers die. We know every time we are sent over the edge that at least one of our mates will die. Angelica, i believe i am in hell and if not hell cannot be worse than this. Your sweet smile is the only thing that can still distract me.

Back in England I have seen plenty of death and despair as a son of a doctor my dear but there are so many things that scare me here. Sometimes if you are not careful you stumble over a corpse, sometimes the remains of their brain is leaking out of their skull. My mind can smell the difference between a rotten rat corpse and a human corpse. You smell the ones who have been before you.

Others are still alive but do not seem to be Angelica. I am afraid they are possesed by something other than human. Or they are simply scared, who would not be? We see things that can't be made by humans being made by them. Angelica, I met a boy, Sidney was his name. He kept saying he was eightteen but he cannot be older than 13 I think. I do not understand this cruelty Angelica. I wonder if you understand you have always been the more tactuful one of us two. I have only ever been a little poet. But a child is being sent to their death simply to defeat another boy which we have declared a demon because they are born in the wrong country. Angelica, to all those german boys. To all those Hermans, those Johanns, Those wolfgangs, those Ulrichs? Am I the demon for them? Explain this concept of absolutly useless murder?

I have always believed in peace, my love. But that now seems rather hopeless. I cannot stop thinking about the families of the soldiers at the other side of the trenches. They have a mother who will mourn. They have their sweethearts too. They might have little siblings who believe they are heroes while they are slowly rotting away in between the rats. Just like us. They are just as human. How can I kill them? Help me my dear.

My angel, my muse. I miss you. I wish we were born in a different time. I have thought about names for her. I was thinking vivian for our little girl or if it is a boy Victor.

your sweetheart, Cecil-Lewis Mayers

I put down the letter. My grandmother's name is vivian, I found all a lot of letters like this in her attic. I don't know a lot about my grandmother's youth. I do know she did not have a father. I look at the picture that is bound to the letters. I smile. My name is victor, I took my mothers name. My name is Victor Mayers. Would Cecil-Lewis be proud?

This is an old edited writing exercise. But I actually quite like it though I think it would need a lot of editing