Stories with Triggers

Dear Natalia,

Everyone shares sleep and I can hear the low sound of snores occurring throughout the foxholes. They sleep and they slept the day before that but me, I can’t sleep and I don’t want to. How can they sleep Natalia? I saw them kill, I saw them shoot with their bare hand, pull that trigger that took away a life and now, they sleep—like I used to. I haven’t even pulled a trigger yet, I’m so afraid, so afraid of becoming one of them and sharing that look that everybody here so heavily carry’s in their eyes. They talk and they joke, but it is when the silence hits, those eyes haunt me. The Lieutenant’s eyes are blue, about the iciest blue you have ever seen and when he speaks of the people he kills, he speaks of them as just another person, just another bump on the log and his eyes; they gradually change into the color of the dark sky above us. It’s bizarre and I’ve never seen anything like it. I keep telling myself I won’t turn into them, that when I come back I’ll be the same and nothing will have changed, not in me, not in us. But I’m starting to doubt myself and how capable I am, I feel no hope and the clarity of home is starting to fade. I’m pretty sure most of the people I think I remember are just figments of my imagination. I said I would never forget who you were and what you mean to me, but your voice is slowly disappearing in the back of my mind and being replaced by the vivid screams of the young boy we encountered the other day.

He was skinny and tall, and I watched as his eyes blew up with fear, they weren’t like the hopeless eyes that haunt me, no, not like the lieutenant at all. His eyes were green, just like the color of the tress you used to climb back home and they were naïve. I watched as he ran and my companion grabbed him and shook him, but the boy screamed, oh how the boy screamed and I was the reason for those screams. As he was pinned down and a gun was held to his head, he looked at me and I looked at him. He wanted to be me, the adult standing there, free from the grasp of that man that was about to take his life, but the feeling was mutual, I wanted to be him. I wanted to be that child, dead and gone. Just to be so easily freed from this misery that I’m slipping into, to feel that gun against the temple of my head and the fast shot of the bullet and then—gone. I want your voice to replace that boys screams, but I don’t think it can anymore. You used to sing, I remember, you used to sing all day, and I used to like it. I want to be back home and hear you sing; hear you sing until I slip into somber sleep. I just want to be home Natalia, and let your voice erase all of this. I’ll be home soon, please God, I’ll be home soon.

Sincerely,
Alex

            I chose to write this letter to Natalia because in reality if I was writing it to anyone else, my feelings and stories would be altered by the idea of what this person thinks of me. However, with Natalia I think its more like writing everything I think and letting her know everything I’m feeling, writing to anyone else wouldn’t help me just because I trust Natalia more than anyone else to discard her judgment and understand what I’m saying. The letter would be honest and would hide nothing from her.