Journal Entry: The Hospital
In hellish times such as these, I can't help but be reminded of my insignificance. To the nuns I'm just another bed.
My worries draw towards my mother. Has she succumbed to the cancer? Is she on the mend? The latter is unlikely but with despair, comes delusional naivety that can only be willed away with the desensitized truths.
Albert has had his leg amputated, the whole thing taken off from the thigh. He hardly mutters a word. I hear his mantra of inaudible deeds. He will do himself in the first time he palms his rifle. I can't say I blame him. I would mourn the passing of my friend but when you become close friends with the gods of death, removal becomes irrelevant to survival.
Lying in a cot with limited maneuverability allows one's thoughts to drift and flit about in varying degrees. They may be as elementary as a fluttering breeze or as dark an impactful as a shelling.
My thoughts sway nostalgically. I sway to the hours spent perusing. Novels and writing, as I once had an avid love, adoration, for the written word. One forgets that type of thing when on the front. Though my previous drabbles, along with a few poetic works, had a whimsical glow and a youthful apparition to them, I find my internal poetry take a darker turn:
"Among shattered bodies, there are still human faces"
"All lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years"
"Could not prevent, this stream of blood"
"A hospital alone shows what war is"
"I am young. I am twenty."
"I know nothing of life but despair"
"I look through the thousands of translucent Photographs
"of smashed hipbones, destroyed legs, and demolished arms
"A hospital alone shows what war is
"Here a man realizes just how many places a man can be hit
" Two men die of tetanus."
"Skin turns pale." "Limbs stiffen." "Eyes live, stubbornly."
"A hospital alone shows what war is."