By Kevin Owen
It’s the molten poker of agony lancing through his mangled guts. It’s the shivering gasps, lungs gargling in a froth of blood. It’s the reek of bowels voided on the entrail-laden wind. His numb fingers fumble for a cross in some corner of a faecal field.
He remembers that fleeting smile, a sunbeam glimpse, that said she was the one. It’s her sunny cottage garden overflowing with nodding blooms. It’s her white bed sheets hanging, gently flapping on the breeze. Her soft rose-petal lips that he’ll never tenderly kiss. And that Bluebird’s bright blue feathers and song he will never hear.
Lyrical.
Almost like a Wilfred Owen poem.
Very vivid imagery. Cost of war. Poignant
Wilfred Owen was my first thought, too.
Great piece – esp the first paragraph.
horror, yet beauty.
Heartbreakingly beautiful.