 (Image: Malvina Perova) |  |
In the quiet hour, when the guns rest and the trench’s walls envelop you gently in the dark, like a mother’s loving embrace, you chase your sleep away with a sip of lukewarm coffee and talk.
“What will you do next rotation?” You ask your war twinned brother, noticing the smears of dirt and clotted blood across his drained face, like marks of honour.
The reply is ever the same. “Sleep first, then take my family out.”
“Where?” you ask to keep hearing a human voice.
“Just shopping. Buy Alisa an ice cream cone and that awfully overpriced doll house she cried all night for. Hell with the money, just want her to have it.” He smiles his lopsided grin and shakes ash from the stub. It falls on his boot like charnel dust.
Tomorrow the enemy’s missile will put your best friend to sleep, as he wanted, but he’ll never take his daughter out.
In the quiet hour, when the guns rest and someone asks you what you’ll do next rotation, you don’t say, Sleep. You can’t sleep now, not until the last shot finishes its murderous fly. The pain-twisted faces of your battle brothers cross your mind every coming twilight. As a prayer, you mumble a promise to survive. Someone has to buy the doll house for Alisa.
“What will you do next rotation?” You ask your war twinned brother, noticing the smears of dirt and clotted blood across his drained face, like marks of honour.
The reply is ever the same. “Sleep first, then take my family out.”
“Where?” you ask to keep hearing a human voice.
“Just shopping. Buy Alisa an ice cream cone and that awfully overpriced doll house she cried all night for. Hell with the money, just want her to have it.” He smiles his lopsided grin and shakes ash from the stub. It falls on his boot like charnel dust.
Tomorrow the enemy’s missile will put your best friend to sleep, as he wanted, but he’ll never take his daughter out.
In the quiet hour, when the guns rest and someone asks you what you’ll do next rotation, you don’t say, Sleep. You can’t sleep now, not until the last shot finishes its murderous fly. The pain-twisted faces of your battle brothers cross your mind every coming twilight. As a prayer, you mumble a promise to survive. Someone has to buy the doll house for Alisa.
