Lovely War

by Julie Berry

“I might find a mortal to love me,” she continues, “but that’s worship, not love. I’m perfect. Mortals aren’t meant to love perfection. It disillusions and destroys them in the end.”

Who would’ve thought, on this utterly normal day, that before bedtime her brain would be scrambled like an egg?

“You’re a brand-new piece of sheet music,” she said slowly, “for a song which, once played, I’d swear I’d always known.”

It was the dimples. Empires have swiveled on less.

James wasn’t sure what he dared call what he felt, but he knew his happiness belonged to the piano girl. Whether she would take and keep it safe for him, or not.

“Keeping the world safe for people to practice their audition pieces seems like the one good reason to fight this war. If music stops, and art ceases, and beauty fades, what have we then?”

If he was trying to kill her through kiss deprivation, it was working.

Warmth rushed upward from her belly to her head, and tingles shivered down her spine. It was real and true. However new, however young.

Aubrey felt his cheeks smile and his belly warm. He had his boys with him, and they’d been through a lot already. No matter what happened, they’d keep on singing.

Here; you’ve been carrying that alone for a long time. Let me carry it with you awhile.

Please come. Prove that you exist, and allow me to prove how much you mean to me. Yours

like to keep a little bit of nervousness simmering. It keeps mortals alert at crucial moments. Sensitive to every detail. It imprints lasting memories. These moments belong to forever.

Let them start their dreadful wars, let destruction rain down, and let plague sweep through, but I will still be here, doing my work, holding humankind together with love like this.