The War Hero

Shredded slightly and standing stark naked, snow falls around my bloody feet. Black hair sticking to the skin like tar. The war has started and ended around me. The faces of men i had known are frozen around me; mouths open in surprise at the face of their death. Swords plunged and thrust into snowy flesh, marking the graves of the men they killed.

A lone booted foot protrudes from a nearby snow bank, and the blood that had once been pouring out has frozen into sharp pink icicles. I envy this man, and want desperately to steal his boots , but then realize there is no point now. I remember this man, just before he died. He had jumped into this bank, hopefully, to hide, digging like a rabbit, but has he drove through the hard snow, someone cut off his leg with a glorious swipe. The blood streaming out like a running faucet. He screamed only once, shrilly, like a tortured cat, eating away at the late afternoon, eating away at the need to survive. I started to undress, striping one layer of uniform at a time, intending to die, wanting to freeze, like everyone else. The monuments of war.