The Story of a Poppy
A/N: My mother originally wrote this story 32 years ago as a rough draft. I found it and made it my own by changing many things and editing it. Therefore, she deserves some of the credit for this story.
p.s: Pull out your Kleenex boxes...
I cry this night
I cry this night. I, who has so much to smile for. I stare into the thickening fog and cry for those who have no tears left to cry with. The war was long ago. The poppies have seen it all. I sit in a field and listen to the poppies as they whisper their sad and tragic tale. They tell me of fear and hunger, stench and famine, cold and hatred. They tell me of homeless children crying over bomb strewn ruins. I see them in the fog, the children, tattered, wounded, crying over mangled pieces of flesh that were once recognizable as parents, friends, brothers, sisters. The children don't really understand it, yet how can they convince themselves that it's not true, as they run, alone and hungry among the devastation. They feel no hatred towards the enemy, they only ask why. It is an unanswerable question.
The poppies tell of the soldiers. Truly I can see them, even feel them about me as they tromp through the fog. They are sons, husbands, lovers, men. They leave their homes with the taste of blood in their mouths, their spirits hardly able to control its vitality. They go out and find that the real choice isn't 'fight or flee' but 'kill or be killed'. They sometimes cry for a while, but soon there are not any tears left. I hear them squelch through the mud and blood. I hear the thud as one falls to the ground at the end of his trail. I see their faces; hard, intensive faces. I see some with broken hearts, but far worse, some with broken spirits. These mangled and scarred faces are those of men I didn't know, men with names I have never heard, and yet I cry out in anguish for those only the poppies can speak for.
The poppies see other parts of the war too. They see the women whose men are off to war, fighting for their country. The women who make socks and gloves for the men at war, the women raising money, guarding children, and serving hospitals in the daytime. Those who go home at night to gaze at a picture of a man. A man whose eyes make her cry. For, looking into his eyes, she sees war. She sees him out there hurting, with no one to comfort him but the rats in the trenches and the men fighting around him. Seemingly the only living things in his tortured world. I see the faces of women in the fog. Faces that sharpen with fear at every knock on the door. Dreading the news of death.
The poppies see other things, like the cries at the end of the war. When people were at first hesitant to believe that it was all truly over, and then cheering for those men who did come home.
They say 'In Flanders Field the poppies grow'. Well, rows of white crosses also grow. As well as great rocks engraved with names. Names of people lost. In almost all fields the poppies grow, even where white crosses and engraved rocks don't. All the poppies can tell the stories for Remembrance Day. The poppies pay their tribute to those men by telling us, who have the time and sentiment to listen, about that heartbreaking story.
I. a lone child in a world of billions, sit in a foggy field and cry. Just me and the poppies, together, crying for the people we never knew or met. Crying for those who cannot.