One Day The Battles Will End
For Fragments of Fiction tied into the story I started here.
“I never will forget those nights
i wonder if it was a dream
remember how you drove me crazy?
remember how i made you scream?
now i don’t understand what happened to our love
now baby gonna get you back
gonna show you what I’m made of…”
Boys of Summer– Don Henley
I have been thinking about timing and second chances. I have been thinking about places I have been and moments that have been burned into my memory. Some of them are among the happiest I have and others, well, they aren’t so happy.
I remember it all, the good and the bad. I remember the feelings of sheer bliss and the knowledge that two people were never more perfectly suited for each other than we were. It was inexplicable and indescribable, this feeling of joy that we brought to each other.
You called me your air and I called you my heart. You took my breath away with your grace and style. I was always conscious of your presence and amazed that you had chosen me to love. Sometimes when we kissed it felt like I had jumped into the arctic sea. My whole body tingled and I was short of breath.
Sometimes I picture a giant earthquake as being responsible for our having been separated. A monstrous quake that tore the land asunder and ripped us apart. Other moments I envision it differently. I have been called up again and sent overseas to fight.
They don’t know when the war is going to end. Can’t tell us anything other than to fight hard and stay safe. I don’t sleep much, just a few hours here and there. I miss you more than you realize. I think of you often. When I first got out here I didn’t have time to think. I was this scared kid who wet his pants the first time he saw action and spent hours scrambling to stay alive.
Now I have grown accustomed to combat. The horrors of war don’t bother me as they should and I wonder if perhaps something inside me is broken. And then I remember that fortune teller we visited at the shore. She told us that we would never have another love like ours and that if we held on tight we could heal each other.
.They were two people who were hopelessly in love and lost each other. So very much in love that they couldn’t quite figure out how to be happy without each other.
“She put him out like the burning’ end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life trying’ to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind
Until the night
1st Chorus
He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I’ll love her till I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby
(Sing lullaby)
The rumors flew but nobody know how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away a little at a time
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind
Until the night
2nd Chorus
She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby”
(Sing lullaby)
But something snapped inside of me and I felt differently. I woke up and felt you thinking about me and I remembered the way you’d laugh when I’d call and you’d say that you were just about to dial my number. I felt you smile and I just knew that you still felt the same but couldn’t figure out how to make it happen.
If I asked you to confirm you would deny it. You’d start a fight because it is easier to use anger to maintain that wall. We’re different that way. I face the pain by sticking my hands in the fire. Neither way is any better or any worse. They are different and that is OK.
Really one of the strengths of our bond is that mature love and the willingness to accept the differences. We don’t try to change each other. You can keep trying to stay irritated with me. I’ll make it easier by saying that it won’t last. And sooner or later you’ll find yourself in that place again.
Makes me giggle just thinking about it.
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