Marching On

We march. The captain gives his orders and we march. It has been a grueling two weeks. The wars always seems to get the best of men. As for how long we have been fighting I do not know. All I can say for certain is that this is the only way of life I have known.
Born on the battlefield. I’ve shown nothing but superiority in combat, tactics and intelligence; which is precisely the reason I am yet a private. This man’s army has no room for those with an ego, especially when it is well deserved. At the academy I was top of the class. They always said that my fighting prowess wasn’t necessary because my superior intellect would avail me to be a general. At the age of eighteen I was shipped to the front as a captain of course, but my pride had me decommissioned time and time again. I would refuse orders if I knew they meant the slaughterhouse. Here at the rank of a private if I were to pull that, it meant the line for me.
We march onward, pushing the enemy toward the eastern lines of their country. Its amazing that with today technology we are still made to walk dozens of miles toward an objective, while those in charge have the luxury of riding to and from in the blink of an eye. In the past two weeks we have pushed the enemy back about three miles. Encountering heavy casualties along the way. Our company is now a platoon, and as of yet we have no reinforcements. The constant hum of planes above has gone from maddening to reassuring. For we know now the sounds of our planes from that of the enemy.
We march , and it is quiet to quiet. We are all tense because we are waiting for the attack that we know is imminent. The counter that may very well put us on the defensive. The only sound heard is that of boots on a hard ground. The country air is still, and even the birds know what is coming and have stopped their song. The air is heavy, and we wait. It is a matter of time, who has death come to claim this time we wonder. Is it me?
Clouds pass by under the sun and the sky is darkened. The distant roar of planes can be heard. It grows louder, and we march on. The rumble is now above is and, it is only now that we realize the planes are not our own. The discontent at the lack of noise had maddened us. It made us soft and we forgot the sounds the keep us alive. Now, it was to late.
The whistles of artillery come from overhead, and as we were out in the open we had nothing to do but scatter and kiss the ground. Those lucky enough to survive would pick themselves up and look to making sure the wounded were “taken care of”. It was a grisly practice but for practicality sake it had to be done. Four planes had flown over, each dropping two to three bombs out of its payload. The scattered war flakes hit the ground around us. Morrison, Burgess, and Lennon didn’t make it. Cobain, and Myers both were mortally wounded on the side near the kidney. Myers and I were close, and so the duty fell to me. My heart shattered as I watched him beg me to leave him and just go on. Of course this was where my heart was, but he knew to much. The last report was that of my AK-74, and all was silent again.
All stood, seven of us now in total. The lieutenant dead, and none of any authority in charge. We look at each other and then toward our prize. We march.

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Rite of Passage

The morning sun rose over the mountain east of the village. The smell of smoked ham permeated the air. Erado sat lazily in the village square underneath the shade of the Wisdom Tree. This day is Erado’s fourteenth birthday, and today was the day he was finally going to celebrate his coming of age. Most other boys celebrate this on their thirteenth birthday, but Erado was not like most other boys.


The previous year, Erado’s father, Esaul, had been killed on a hunting expedition. That was the day before Erado’s birthday. As he had no one else, his mother died during birth, Erado had been forced to wait until the following year for this historic rite of passage. It saddened him to think that his father would not be there to perform the delivering of torch. Instead, today, it would be the village elders handing him the torch to light the lantern in front of his home.

Erado had started to doze in the shade of the Wisdom Tree. Children’s laughter could be heard and the sound of the brook soothed Erado’s soul. This past year had been rather difficult for him. In a matter of months, Erado aged dramatically. Erado’s appearance went from youthful and full of life to being hard and ragged with the knowledge of the world. If only his father could see him, and how much of a man he had become, without their rites of manhood. However, in order to be recognized by the rest of his community, Erado had to go through this.

The voice of one of the elders called to Erado, and he had no choice but to give up his daydream and give heed to the elder’s voice. Erado stood and looked around. The wind gently kissed his cheeks, and he knew. The Wisdom Tree had been the spot his father and he used to sit and talk. This tree had more right to grant the boy his rite of manhood than the elders did, and yet with the wind Erado’s resentment blew away. Erado approached the elder, who was now standing in front of Erado’s hut.

Erado smiled and laughed inwardly as the elder handed the torch to him. Through everything, he had been through, and through everything, he had seen Erado was in many ways a man more so than those that had received their rite the previous year. It was at this he laughed, because he knew his father had already bestowed manhood upon him; under the shade of the Wisdom Tree.

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Burning For Her

It was cold; I remember that much for sure. I know I was not in the mood to think. All I know is that I hurt. It was going on more than a year and a half that I thought of her. I could not escape her, and here I was about to end it all; about to end everything I had been through. The snow was biting at my feet, my hands a bit numb. Leave it to my friends to turn something like this into a joke. They were laughing and I was breaking. I had come as low as I could at this point. Everything of mine belonged to her. My thoughts, my actions, even my private sanctum of sleep was in her hands. I had given her everything that I could. I had to do it; as much as I wanted to turn and run, it was something that needed to happen. I had to end it all.
We were standing in small circle around the fire pit, frozen with snow shin deep. I held everything in my hand, the notes, the picture, and everything else that reminded me of her. My writing, time, and most of all my heart was there. Being wet, there was nothing to do but set them on fire one at a time, hoping to catch the others. It was my job, to end that part of my life, to rip away the cancer gnawing away at my soul. My hands shaking I raised the first paper in one hand, and brought the lighter up to meet it with the other. My heart searing like the paper before me, and all the while, they were laughing. Laughter, what a horrible distraction, it takes away the meaning to those who cannot really handle a situation. No wonder people always laugh when they are upset. It isn’t that I was really bothered by their amusement I was just shocked to see that no one saw what this meant to me, or that they just did not know how to react at all. The first thing to remove any trace of, was that forsaken poem.

My proclamation of eternal love, that was to be the first to go. I no longer wanted or needed it. I desired to hate it, as I desired to hate her. I watched as the paper browned and crisped, catching it ablaze was going to prove to be more difficult than I thought it would, just as letting go would be. The others soon started seeing the “difficulty” I was having and were jumping at the bit to get a piece of my shattering heart. One moment I possessed everything the next I was dividing myself amongst the others to destroy. They were laughing and I just wanted peace. Dancing, burning, melting pain, their laugh I remember all of it. We managed finally to bring it all to its limits, but somehow I was still unsatisfied. It was not what I thought it would be. My desire for the dramatic or the theatric proved not to work. It was nothing but a pipedream.

We placed it all in the pit, and I stood there watching my hopes of peace flash before my eyes, nothing but an intangible dream. Nothing can be realized without time. I failed to realize that time was the healer, not theatrics or dramatics, but time. This was supposed to be my lesson that day, and unfortunately, it was a lesson that I would learn as I tried for the next several weeks to remove her from my mind.

The remnants of the papers had finally charred and turned to ash. I stood a few minutes longer looking into where my heart had lain. The rest of the group had made up their minds that the task was complete and so they walked justifiably indoors. I stood there looking into the pit, my hopes scorched and seared. I had thought that after this, great burning, that I would feel at peace. I felt that I was entitled to continue with my life, although all I could feel was the emptiness of where something great had once rested.

It was cold; I remember that much for sure. I remember that at the end of it all I was smiling. It wasn’t a smile of joy, but that of irony. With the others inside, I just stood there. Even after going through all of this, I was not my own. I smiled, because at the end of it all, when a person doesn’t know how to react to something they have nothing else to do but laugh.

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