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Lying on this battlefield and looking up at the sky, I know my life is ending. My head is filled with you; your smell, your pale curls, your lovely brown eyes. When you first smiled at me over your teacup, the flames in the fireplace behind me caused your skin to glow gold and I could no longer see the adorable freckles sprinkled across the cheeks I love so dearly.
The sky is growing dark now, the stains on the grass tussocks almost indistinguishable. Not that I ever saw the battlefield for what it was, I paid no heed. Not today. I could only see your hands clasped in the folds of your white cotton dress, a product of imagining. Your delicate face, superimposed over the lifeless features of the dead soldier two feet from me. I cannot tell which side he killed for, not for all the guts and blood spilled upon his uniform. It doesn’t matter anyway. I must try not to think of you now, your soft mouth, nor the curve of your shoulder, for I do not want you here with me. I cannot stand to have you here in this terrible killing field, for you would weep, and the blood stains never leave the hem of your white, white dress.
I pray to your empty God that you remember me. For the man I was, for the man I could have been, not another broken corpse a thousand miles from home.
It smells, of rotten flesh and the shit of dead men, of grey smoke and mud. The pain from the wound in my stomach has died down some, almost numb now. I do not think I can move my legs. My own blood has mixed with the dirt beneath me and has formed a paste that keeps me stuck surer than any fabric glue in my workshop. So much death. I am alone out here in the silence save the cawing of crows. They are laughing. There is no more clash of blades now. I'd be surprised if there were enough of us left to carry on. From this angle, I can see every mound representing one of the fallen. Bloody, mangled and sightless, stretching on up to the horizon and strung up like grisly scarecrows.
One of the circling birds swoops down and perches upon one mound, and is eyeing it hungrily, damn bird. I want to tell it to be off, to let the dead rest in peace, but the only sound to leave my mouth sounds like one of the crows themselves. I will try again. Pain. It ripples through me in blinding flashes. My lungs are heaving, but I still watch in satisfaction through blurred vision as the crow huffily takes wing.
I left the ring you gave me in the trenches, I hope one of the boys finds it and brings it home. It should scare me more than it does, that I can no longer picture your face, nor remember your smell. I can’t quite recall the colour of your eyes. Green, maybe? I have a song stuck in my head, and the only lyrics are the last words you spoke to me, repeated over and over.
Keep yourself safe for me. Fairfarren, my love.