We Will Remember

Remembrance

You remember me falling down onto the ground. You remember me lying there, still, so still. You remember kneeling down beside me as tears reached your eyes and spilled onto your sharp cheekbones. You remember feeling my pulse. Nothing. You remember feeling my forehead. Marble cold. And then you kissed me. You kissed me hard, like there was no tomorrow. And then you left my corpse to escape. Escape the madness that is the trenches.

You remember trying to scramble out of the hole in the ground and reach a place where the sickly sweet gas wouldn't make you fall down and die. Like I did. You remember my last moments, relive them, as you escape. Escape the madness.

You hope in the deepest corner of your mind that I haven't been trampled on or crushed in the panic that seized the entire battlefield. You remember that the priest says that the body, once dead, goes to heaven or hell. You know it is only a corpse, nothing more. Just an ordinary corpse. But in the corner of your mind, you know that this isn't true. But escape is the only option now. You had to go. Escape the madness.

You dreamt that one day we would be together. Where race didn't matter, where we would be free to be ourselves. It wouldn't matter who you were friends with, what your background was. All that would matter is the now, the us. The us.But that wouldn't matter now. You just had to escape the madness.

You only discovered your true self when you looked into my eyes. I thought I knew myself, but then I saw you. I knew I loved you. You loved me. That is all we needed to survive. But they could never see that. So you had to escape the madness.

You had seen society that would treat us well when they saw us on the street, not just shout at us and wonder whether we were mad or not. We wanted to survive to that day. You knew only one of us would do so now. So you escape. Escape the madness.

Even if the escape was not your idea, if it was the Nazis' idea, you would salute them. As you had to escape. I saw inside you that you couldn't survive without me. You didn't notice me. I was hurt but unhurt.  I knew that the priest was wrong. Or maybe he was right and we were being punished. Who knows? I escaped. He escapes. He escapes the madness.

He runs away from the scene. The horrendous scene from which our pay comes from. He relives my death. Happy to escape the madness.

He knows I'm dead but hopes that I'm watching him. He just doesn't know I'm this close. So as he runs, I see something ahead. I want to stop him. I want to sacrifice myself for him. But he knows what is going on. He'll escape the madness this way.

So I greet him as my soul reaches his. Our spirits hold each other and ascend. Or maybe descend. I don't care as long as I'm with him.