Whisper

by Tal Bauer

“Never let anyone else define your life, Kris. Never let anyone else define who you are. They will always get it wrong. Never settle for that.”

“When I am with you, I feel parts of myself come together. Parts I thought couldn’t ever mix. You make me want to be everything I am. For you.”

“You’re like a part of me I didn’t know was missing. Part of my mind, or my soul. Like you have the thoughts I haven’t thought yet, feelings I haven’t felt yet, waiting for me. Inside you. You feel like a part of me I’ve been craving.” David’s voice was a whisper, a breath.

“I think the whole world is going to get lost in this war.”

America is free. America is good. America is where you will have a better life. He’d had so much hope, flying cross the ocean to a land that seemed almost mythical.

“In a way, we lost this war when we lost Dan.” Kris cleared his clenched throat, tried to speak through the memories, the pain. “When we lose ourselves, when we become what we hate, we’ve lost everything. Defeat came, and we lost the war, and we never even saw it. But now we're sitting in the rubble and ruin and trying to make sense of the future.”