This was not any kind of protest against any kind of war I’m
used to, no kids inducted to fight in jungles or deserts or mountains or plains.
Thinking back, I’m not sure it was war at all, no mortal
enemy, no obvious battlefield, and yet, it felt like a war, and she won, and it took
me all these years to realize, though I surrendered long ago, wishing for the
appeasement the losers sometimes get, though it is always to the winners go the
spoils.
I never even got a goodbye kiss, just stares across a the negotiation table where she got to lay out the terms, her allies too tough for
me to surmount.
Like all wars, this war has become history, the terms of
engagement dictated by her, boundaries I could not cross, places I was not
allow to tread for fear or retribution.
I carry my heart away in my chest the way an army carts it casualties,
missing pieces of myself the way soldiers have missing limbs, with no way to
undo the wounds received or given, needing to accept it all, the way Lee had to
when dealing with Grant, lucky to be allowed to escape the worst of it, even
now, even all these years after the fact
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