in a box

The smell of gas and dirt in the air. The sickening stench of blood above all that.

Your comrades, your friends, who've you've gotten close to, dying next to you.

You don't do anything. Hell, you can't do anything.

You're not a doctor, just a teenager trying to fit a criterion to impress Sally at home.

You hear your friend groan. Shots fired over that.

Stop thinking about yourself, you think. Bill, Bob, Dick, whatever, they're dying.

You know that you will remember this moment forever.

Your friend is bleeding out of their stomach.

Spurting out. There's too much blood to be humanely possible.

Yet it still keeps coming out. It's red. But blue at the same time.

Blood is a color they will never get right in movies.

You chuckle. Giggle, even.

Ha, well now I'll go home as a man who's seen it all.

How morose.

There's a new smell of blood. A new scent. You feel something prickle on your upper lip.

Warm blood. You've got a nosebleed.

Hold your head up high, your mom always used to say.

It doesn't help that much. The blood just pools at your nostrils.

How funny.

You and your friend bleeding together, both with drastically different endings.

You'll go off with your troop, dried blood caked on your face,

your friend going off in a box, back to the United States.

How funny. So funny that you manage another chuckle.

we all bleed the same.