𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍 | | 1917

23. PICTURES

" It was never about surviving. I just wanted
to live. "

-

"QUAND PARS-TU?"

When are you leaving?

Jo was standing in the living room. Her fingers gently tracing the outsides of the books aligned in the dusty shelves. Her eyes flickered at the sound of her mother's voice and soon enough, her head turned.

She stayed silent, watching as the woman slowly made her way over. Quiet steps.

"J'ai vu le journal sur ta table," she then said in a low tone. I saw the newspaper on your table.

Jo still didn't say anything. The silence was her answer to her mother's grief nowadays. Whatever form it would come in.

"Alors, quand pars-tu?"
So, when are you leaving?

She had a hard time figuring out the emotion in her mother's voice and face and she was becoming nervous, hoping that this wouldn't become something bigger than it needed to be.

"Je ne sais pas vraiment." When she did speak out, it was quiet. I don't really know.

"Eh bien, il y a un train qui part dans trois jours," her mother then said. Well, there's a train leaving in two days.

Jo blinked obliviously.

"il y a?" she mumbled, unable to hide the surprise in her tone of voice. There is?

Her mother nodded. The stern look upon her face slightly softening.

"Vas-tu bien?" she then askes after a while.
Will you be alright?

Jo nodded before her thoughts would get ahead of her. For the truth was- she did not know the answer to that question, she simply took herself as someone that always made it through.

She would be alright.

-

Her eyes were sunken and tired. Only tiny gaps in between her lids stopping them from being entirely closed.

It was late at night as Jo would find herself once awake in the late night. She couldn't sleep. She didn't want to sleep. For Jo could not bear to hear the screams again. Not now and not ever again. For the first time, she had enough. It had become some sort of habit of hers. Something that gave her the slightest sense of control. Control over herself that she felt like she had been losing for the past few months. She knew that this was something that needed to stop. It would only drive her even more insane than she already was.

But what could the young girl do?
It was all she knew.
Such ignorant innocence.

She understood though. In the past, she had been thinking of the soldiers that came home. Those lonely men that were traumatized and scarred by the horrors of war. She understood their pain and she understood their suffering.

But now, she felt it.

Jo may not have worn the brown uniform herself and she may not have held a rifle in her muddy hands, but she now finally felt it. That same pain and that same suffering. The frustration and regret which you could only dream of getting rid of.