The last word came out strangled. I didn’t expect that. I don’t cry any longer. I’ve lost the trick of it. Lots of soldiers do, eventually, and only the lucky ones get it back. But even if I can’t, my throat still closes up sometimes, and it closed up now, because I knew I couldn’t explain what it had meant, when I sat there staring at the snow for a month straight with my mouth full of ashes and my head full of dead men, that the tea was always there and always hot.
