This war will haunt you a year from now, ten years from now. Or it might not haunt you at all; there might be none of you left to haunt but for the worms who find a home in your skull and make a ring on your thumb. If you–when you–come back, you want to come back no less than how you left.
You’ll find no love out there—in the green, in the mud. It will be sucked from the tips of your palms to the back of your spine, from the flow of your blood to the pulse of your heart. No love. There will be no love.
But there will be pain. And fear. And blood and dirt and shit and rain, so much rain. By the time your men, your friends, start to drop like the shots that hit the mud you’re stuck in, you’ll find no love is left for the dead to hold. Take your men on your back. Love will do it no more.
All the things they told you, good things, bad things…all these things are false. You know that. Hold them close to your chest, next to your head so you know why they made you do this.
Know things will not be the same as they were. Know the one part of you left is tucked in your chest and can be felt when you breathe. Stay calm. Breathe, for this pain will shape you. Breathe when you can while the rest is sent to die.
May Death suck down the world that made you like this. May God take his tears and cause the roads to flood. May he stomp his feet on the ones that made these men so hard, so shocked, so cruel. May ash be the one thing left to live on the Earth as the trees burn and each bridge falls.