12. Courage
We are the courageous ones. We are the cannon fodder.
We feel like nothing else because we are never expecting to feel again. We feel hands and touch and breath and hair between our fingers because we cannot even predict our own actions. Every breath might as well be the last for the way we treat it.
In a different time, we would have been the sports stars, daringly risking our lives for something stupid and expensive and shiny. We would have been the drinkers and the drug addicts, searching for that one thing that wakes us up and makes out hearts beat. We would have been the film stars and the singers, looking for that last bit of attention and that bit of love that makes it all right again.
But it is not a different time – and we are the warriors. We don't fight with our words, we fight with our wands, and when that's not good enough, our fists and feet and nails and teeth and anything else we've got. We dream about the war and we scream in our sleep because that's the only time we can afford fear. We are never alone because we know what's coming. We stand in the battlefield, fingers tangled together, looking straight ahead because everything behind us is done. We either win, or we die and there are no other choices.
At night we pair off, because we are too young and too crazy not to fall in love. The redheaded girl arching over the dark boy, kissing his forehead and screaming his name so loud, too loud and shush they'll hear us. We sleep half-entwined under the same sheets and the thing we love most in the world is the feel of breath against our skin – because it means we're still alive. It means we've won.
We are not the strategists and we don't care what happens over a conference table when this is all done. We are the tools. We are the weapons. We were sent here for reasons we don't understand, and if you'd like to know the truth, we're not sure we're happy about that. But this is who we are, and this is where we are right now.
This is how it is.
We are the courageous ones. We are the cannon fodder.