Nameless Soldiers
Soldier's Conflict
We are nameless soldiers, holding guns to each other's heads in deep mistrust, squandering the ability to negotiate and be tolerant because our feelings override us.
I watch them together as the firelight takes over the camp and dusk settles over us with a net of darkness, fireflies stuck to the weave. More hover around us, yet to be captured. I don't stay with the others, but I know she sleeps with him. It weighs upon my chest, both worry and happiness for her. Perhaps, yes, I feel jealous because he is her guard now and not I. I have to let her go; she can no longer be under my wing all the time. It frightens me.
We grow distant, in some ways. The bond of love we felt is no longer so expressive since we have to tolerate each other all the time, in this small place. She shares a quiet, candle-lit dinner with him, her lover and her deepest friend. I know she tells him things I will never know.
I don't know why I told her I trust him when she came to me for advice. I can't believe I gave her my council, my experience— or lack thereof. He's my enemy because he knows her so well. I trust my enemy more than I have ever trusted any of my friends. Thereupon with my testimony, this becomes evident: I am one fucked up man. Not really a man, but still a boy. Of course, fucked up in the figurative sense of the phrase only, never literally.
My own puts her arms around me, bare in the warm Mediterranean night, and whispers in my ear. She plays, but I don't think she knows how much it hurts me when she teases. Me, being as naïve and pure-minded as I can allow myself. She tells me I close myself off to my past, and I don't deny it although she's convinced I simply don't wish to acknowledge it. I want to forget all I've seen and be as innocent as I used to be. If I could back up twelve years to when everything happened, I'd do anything to warn them of the coming apocalypse. Even if it meant losing my woman.
Her playful mood is dropped as she notices my attentions. She sighs and kisses my cheek, as if she understood. I take hold of her arm, feeling the soft, warm skin under my fingers, and tell her not to leave. I've run myself in circles yet again with this mindless, meaningless brooding. She holds me in silence, for once not pursuing my bitter thoughts. By the campfire, I begin to drift off and she lets me rest against her. It has been a harrowing day. It was time to let go for a while, she whispers to me.
I glance up and see that indeed the evening has faded into night, as a new chapter has begun in our lives. It's time to rebuild what are cinders on the ground. It is time to repair old wounds and erase the scars. It is time to make something greater that so many people once had faith in. I see yet another falling angel, a shooting star, and wonder what it was from. Was it a piece of our wreckage not yet dissolved or merely a leftover of the universe's own formation? I'll never know, now that it's dissolved in flames. I guess it doesn't matter, now that it's gone. I wonder . . . does it work the same way with people? Good or evil— or merely a regular with good intentions— I don't think it matters. Death is just blankness after life. People make up afterlives to that they aren't afraid of the unknown. I've seen emptiness. Compared to some things we do to ourselves, it really isn't too bad.
She yawns against my shoulder and snuggles as close as I will allow. I look up and see the lovers have left. We are the only ones left out under a blanket of cobalt sky and moonlight. I make up my mind.
I turn around and kiss her, as she had long wanted this night, I know. She returns it steadily, slowly savoring it. There is my tent, still lit. I always sleep alone.
Not tonight. Never again.
We are nameless soldiers combating the loneliness we feel inside ourselves, day in, day out. But when the night comes, things are illuminated in ways never before. Love is not something to be thrown away. To think I could lecture those words and not know myself what they meant makes me disappointed with myself.