In Memoriam

by Alice Winn

He wondered what it was like to be someone like Ellwood, who contributed to the beauty of a place, rather than blighting it.

Ellwood was in love with Gaunt. Gaunt was thoroughly decent and conventional.

The pining omg

I’m sorry. This is not what I intended to say. What I meant to say is this: You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.

i keep coming back to this one quote and how it sets the tone and character of ellwood ;;

I have lost more than I can say, and what remains of me is not worth much.

I stood on the most God-forsaken patch of earth I hope ever exists and I thought: I wonder how Elly is.

man my heart :(

Gaunt reached out and stroked Ellwood’s eyebrow with a trembling thumb. Ellwood kept very still, and let out a jagged breath when he stopped.

im acting like a victorian man crying over the smallest touches help

“I’m going to die out there,” said Gaunt. “I thought…I thought it would be nice if you remembered me the way I was.” “You mustn’t talk like that. Anyway, I like you the way you are.”

h e l p

I love you, I love you, I love you, Ellwood mouthed into Gaunt’s hair.

Anyway, Gaunt already knew that Ellwood loved him. Because of the sonnets.

i cannot do this

knew with dizzying certainty that he would love him even when Gaunt was balding and wizened and spent.

ELLWOOD MY SWEET TT

Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.

“You’re alive,” said Ellwood, “Henry, oh God—” “I passed a body that looked like you—” “I saw a shell hit you; are you wounded?” “It blew me into a tricky spot but I got out all right—”

i just want these two to be happy pls

“I wish I could tell you in my own words,” he said. “But I can’t. And you don’t want me to. ‘Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, / Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving—’ ”

although he did hate Ellwood a little, just then, hated him for his useless, incomprehensible eloquence, which did not belong at Loos, which reminded Gaunt of Preshute and England and things he did not want to think of until he could be sure he would have them again.

i am in p a i n

Gaunt didn’t care; he would die, he knew he would, and Ellwood was looking at him as if he was the world.

“Well, maybe if you used your own words for once, instead of speaking in cryptic fucking quotations—” “Cryptic? How thick are you?”

these two are so oblivious god help them

“I’ll be nineteen in July,” said Ellwood, after a moment. “Older than Gaunt ever was. All my life I’ve been younger than him. Isn’t it funny?”

“He’s very tired,” she’d apologised to the farmer. Yes. He was very tired.

the callback to the previous chaps when gaunt kept saying he was tired is brilliant.

Ellwood turned to the window so that Hayes couldn’t see his face. The tears fell easily. There were so many of them, they kept falling, and Ellwood could not stop them, no matter how much he blinked and breathed.

it's 4 am and im in tears lesgaur

He did not know that it was the first thing homesick little boys in their dormitories learnt at boarding school: how to cry in silence.

He hacked at the damp earth, each blow punishing his lungs. Fool. Blind, wasteful, cowardly fool; all those sonnets in Lower Sixth…! All those months you might have had!

I hear the breaking bodies scream. Thankful I have hit my mark, I slither through the trenching dark. You bleed to death in all my dreams.

you bleed to death in all my dreams :c

Gaunt forced down his fear. It was amazing, all the different textures fear could have. He thought he would prefer to face machine guns than look at the papers and find Ellwood’s name there, permanent as a tombstone.

Ellwood wanted to love him, but his heart seemed to be made up of edges; and instead of affection, a choking anger built beneath his ribs. He didn’t know why, or how to stop it. His hands trembled with how badly he wanted to break something.

At the very back of his mind, he clawed feebly for the fragments of a Rupert Brooke poem, but found nothing. He wished he were dead.

the way he still tries to cling to his old self with poems but nothing comes up is heart wrenching

On Divisional Rest, Gaunt had once stroked his eyebrow—the one that no longer existed—and called him “handsomer than ever.” Gaunt had always loved beauty.

nooo i highlighted that jm gonn cry

Ellwood had to turn away, because it was painful to look at something so lovely without knowing if he would be allowed to keep it.

JUST CRUSH MY HEART PLS

On the hospital bed, Ellwood stirred slightly, alive, vivid, lovelier than ever. Gaunt closed his eyes.

he lp

‘I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.’ ”

i cannot believe jm cryingniver a mam qiuoting shakespeare of all things