In Memoriam

by Alice Winn

You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.

We had reached a point in history where we believed it was possible to make war humane.

It must be spring. It will be brisk in the mornings, and the sky will be blue, with birdsong bursting out of the green, green trees,

And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.

If Ellwood were a girl, he might have held his hand, kissed his temple. He might have bought a ring and tied their lives together. But Ellwood was Ellwood, and Gaunt had to be satisfied with the weight of his head on his shoulder.

He looked even more like a painting than usual.

Their lips met, and things became simple.

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.

He felt that if he could only capture one blessed moment with Ellwood—the way his mouth tasted, perhaps, or the look on his face when Gaunt did something that pleased him in bed—then he might hold on to it in the trenches and feel that some part of him had survived.

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.