He's off being a soldier. Right now. Right as I type this. Right as you read it.

This simple site. This frail weave of electronic dreams made hope and hate and fears and worries of our own... What are they to a military man? What are they to a sodier on this anniversary of so many things...

Maybe he is sunburnt. Tired. Thirsty. Hot. Does he march harder on this day of days, or does he pause to rest, take a moment to think? Staring up at the strange sky what passes through his mind? all the people gone, the people left behind?

Does he take today to reaffirm his beliefs, or to question what it is he's done? What do the thousands dead in New York mean to him, when compared to the thousands of deaths of his fellow soldiers? What do the American deaths mean to him when juxtaposed with the thousands more foreign people dead in foreign places, or juxtaposed with those dead by his own hands?

Does he see their faces, does he know their know their names? Has he met their abandoned families and looked out over their destroyed villages... Does he feel anger? sadness? Pain?

But maybe he's not pale, or burnt at all. Maybe he's dark, dusty, wrapped in Islamic attire. The opposing soldiers, those mystery men with their alien ways... Do they take silent commemoration of this day that began all the struggle, or redouble their force in its name? Do they fight out of anger at the strange pale men who try to run their lives, shooting at them and cursing at them in heathen tongues?

Do they hate us for our sinfulness in their eyes, or for our takeover of their country? Maybe hate is all they've ever known.

Maybe it's fear that drives them. The massive tanks, the gunshots in the night, the fearful blasts and cool calculations of the men in splotchy uniforms.

Is it mere resentment of the invasion, in your mind? Do they have feelings beyond their fanaticism, as you can see it?

Somewhere beyond the media masks and the gag of a language and a history we can't understand, there is more. Beyond he propaganda, the misunderstandings, the mistakes of the white man and the darker man alike...

The soldiers are all human, a race one and the same. They've all got families they've left. They've homes deserted... for what? For Hate?

For Pride, For Vengeance, Honor, Love, or Fear?

What of Mercy? What of understanding?

What does the soldier see?

...

I have a soldier, mine. But not one that I truly know. There are so many unanswered questions in the letters he sends home... and in the letters on my part. What he tells me, what I tell him...

What can I tell him, really?

I have so many worries of my own that add up to nothing compared to his, but those worries make up my world.

My silly, superficial, flimsy fallacy.

He has so much strength.
He deserves so much better than my weakness. These secrets of mine. These doubts and fears and actions that I dare not speak of lest I be the last thing to collapse in his unstable world...

9/11 woke up the world...

On this anniversary I dream of sand, and sun, smoke, and dire. Collapsing buildings on both sides of the world, separated by time.

But mostly, I dream of him.

9/11.
Don't forget,
But don't forget to think, either.
The losses aren't over yet.


Anonymous
04:41:51 PM