Sometimes I think about how we used to be in love. Granted, it pales in comparison to the gravity of the times in which we lived, but still I remember it. When the world, tainted and broken as it is, recedes into second nature for a quiet moment, I will pull out our shared past like a fading photo album and look through it fondly. We did have some good times, you and I. There were times when, even despite the impending doom clouding over the future of all whom I loved, I thought I was truly happy.
I always felt a little worm of guilt gnawing away at my chest. How could I be so happy when, quite possibly, everyone that I had ever known was about to face their deaths? I would feel it whenever you would push a strand of hair from my face, run your thumb along the bridge of my nose, bury your face in the crook of my neck.
Your mother thought it was real. I remember how brightly her eyes shone when you introduced me as your girlfriend. I remember giggling, thinking how silly it was to be introduced to her in the first place when I had known her for so long, so many years. I remember feeling strangely proud to be holding your hand in that living room, like I had won and here I was, clutching the trophy between the fingers on my left hand. Yet still did that worm wriggle through my resolve.
I remember how you wanted to make love, your eyes deep with the question and your hands roving adventurously along the terrain of my frame. I can't think why, after all that, I still denied you that gift. I think, even then, I knew that you and I were merely acting out in desperation, grasping into the one beacon of light in a world where the future grew steadily dimmer with the passing of each sunrise. I knew that our love was an exercise in futility.
And when you died, I remember that as well. I was there, oh yes. I watched as the world collapsed into blood and fire while you sank into the field of wheat outside your hometown. I watched as your eyes quickly faded from indignation and righteousness to vacancy. I witnessed your spirit leaking from its former housing. I watched it, and I felt the death in my soul.
Now, in the long and terrible aftermath of the war, I am left alone with these, my memories. Someday I might emerge from my hermitage, but right now, the wind and the sky and the trees are my chosen companions.
Ron, dearest Ron, I may have loved you with less than infallible integrity, but that does not mean that I cannot mourn your loss. With every breath I take, I feel as though the whistling wind entering my lungs sings a requiem for you. You gave your life for the ones that you loved, for the promise of a future that you could believe in. I reason now that it must be better for you to have died, for you to have exited this life before you could see your hopes shattered.
I await the time when I will join you in the ethereal world beyond human reckoning. Perhaps then I will have a more perfect love to offer you, a love beyond the concerns and fears of this bloody universe.