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A LETTER TO THE LOST (YEARS LATER)

BY KAILEY RHONE

It has been ages. But time moves slower for those who wait. I've never been
truly adverse to the thought of exiting sooner, but I know you would have argued
against it. I missed my chance in Normandy and you, instead, took it. However,
as you laid down in your grave I, in turn, laid down in mine. But my four walls are
not so solid as the roots and mud of earth. To any other perhaps my walls are not
walls at all. But in my body I find more imprisonment than I find freedom, and thus I
feel that our flght was no victory in the end.

The cost of liberty does very little to liberate, but leaves all men trapped. If
not by the bloody game of politics then by the weight of all the ghosts with whom
he is forced to live. You once told me if the day should come that you and I were
no longer alive on the earth at the same moment, I should look at the world as if
it were the first time opening my eyes. In this way I could be brought back to the
beginning. Before the pain, before the loss.

But in myoid age I have become blind. My eyesight has failed me. As despairing
a fact it is, time has even robbed me of this one salvation. It is said that the blind
only see darkness. Well, that is a lie. Salvation has been given to me; this blind man
sees you. He sees your colors and he sees your light, even if it has faded from this
world.

They have said our love was unnatural. But with acid through my teeth I must
proclaim that burying the gentle hearts of youth is the most unnatural of all. Did
they kiss you then? With tears like ribbons of salt over your cheeks and lips? Did
they see you then? With radiance more vivid than any star?

They never felt the rugged map of your palms nor the constant (not so much
anymore) rush of blood in the ridge of your wrists. Tell me it is unnatural to love
another, when at our birth we cry for an embrace. You and I were one, and we ftt
together in that way. But now I am half of what I was. I am a blind man with a soul
ripped like delicate tissue paper.

I bleed not my blood, but yours. My death will be your second. When we are
again reunited as comrades and as lovers you might ask me what you've missed;
"Did we win?" you will say. I will touch you gently at 1he throat, in that small hol-
low where a pulse flutters, and answer "I think at last we have."