1944 (blank)

I found a quiet place, away from the war, away from everyone else, both of which were small miracles. His notebook was small, a black cover, worn and dirty. Still damp in his blood, the pages stuck. I gently separated them with my nail and as I began to read, his mind opened to a depth I could not fathom and I began to drown in a language deeper than I could swim, as if, from the grave, he was pulling me under, revealing a serenity and sensitivity, seductive as sand and sea, shells and sun, of the call of all things free of the hands of men. As free as he was now from this war.

I read, almost dreamlike, for I have not slept. Beside his book, that blackness, those words like hooks in my eyes, that damning man who will not be back, who will not allow me life, who upon the writing of his mind, has stolen mine. But beside that torrent of pages, they lie. Like little paddles without a handle. I have not the night, nor the knight for that matter, but I have the lance, the sword, the syrettes, arranged, ready in foil, ready to swim in the vale of my veins, to warm what is cold, to send me where this army will not.

If I had but the courage; for what they say is but a another lie. There is no courage in the glass. A pathetic pathology, but nothing else. The numbing of common sense, the narrowing of vision, but as I look upon the paddles, those little tubes ready to take me home, my pilfered plunder as the wheatened one might say, I know I can't. Not this night. So I read more from his blood stained journal. This final testament. And I stare upon the pages toward the end, those blank pages filled now with nothing. And I know tomorrow they will still be blank as they will next week and the year after. Blank of him. Blank of me. Blank of us.