Poppies

Boom!

The Earth explodes.

And I’m nowhere near my body, I’m up in the air, I’m flying, and maybe what they say is true and you do remain conscious for a few seconds after they cut your head off. Not sure if the theory still holds when it’s blown off your body though.

Shrapnel sings through the air. I’m too surprised to feel it. Too dead maybe. You know you might die. As they start dying next to you, you realize fast that you might be next. Just another number. You know you might die. But you never think you will.

“De la chair à canon,” said Deroux this morning, before the daily slaughter began and they shot him to pieces. Cannon flesh. French is a colourful language.

That’s Deroux there, a few feet away from me (well, some parts of me), still leaking into the ground. I seem to have rained on him. The mud isn’t grey any more. The sky is grey, all the way to the horizon. Our uniforms are as grey as our corpses. Our battleground is close to a dried up riverbed, which we crossed to get here - four dead there, Perrot, Thompson, and two I don’t know - and the mud was grey to begin with - lifeless, grass churned out of it, the earth all up-and-down lumpy from being blown up.

My life doesn’t flash before my eyes. That bit they were wrong about. Only I find myself thinking about certain bits of it as I observe the infinite fall of my shattered flesh. Some of it surprises me - things I had thought forgotten. My mother’s face - dead too young for me to know her, but I remember her now, a dark, seductive woman whose carmine smile reminds me eerily of my own. That time my cold, stern brother, who I swear has never smiled at me in his life, bought me my first atomic firebombs and walked round town with me on his shoulders, not minding when I clung to his hair with sticky hands. I laugh - if Emma knew why I love firebombs so much, she wouldn’t scold me for eating them. She always did find it a shame about us not being friendly, like she is with her own brother.

Emma. A jump forward in time, and the brother in question is my bunk mate at school. We would fight so much, but we were the best of friends. Charlie he was called, and one day he dared me to climb the theatre curtains on the stage, and I brought them both - and the railing - tumbling down on his head.

I remember the embers of the bonfire in front of which I met Emma. It was the fifth of November - the sixth really - and everyone had gone home except for me, her and Charlie. I was staring into the dying flames in a rare contemplative mood most probably brought on by drink, and she asked what I could possibly be thinking about. I said I was wondering what I would do if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, in a war, say, and she said “Of course, the answer is ‘love’”.

So I did. I loved her - still love her, with the bright, firey passion of first love, that night and every one after it. I didn’t care what people thought. She did, and I regret that now, because without me there to protect her, who will?

Charlie died last week, in the hospital tent. He made me promise to take care of her, the bastard. He knew I couldn’t promise, but he made me do it anyway. I’m a traitor now. I made the others promise to kill me before I got to making them promise things. At least they won’t have to do that.

I’m floating in the air above a carnage. Watching it happen. Being dead does odd things to your nerves. I know why we were fighting. I signed up - Emma made me, mostly, I didn’t want to leave her on her own, white feather or no - but I did understand why we had to win the war. Still, it seems unimportant now. I should have stayed home. I should have kept her safe. Sadness as grey as the landscape fills what’s left of me as the last of the soldiers dies or flees the battleground. I can’t tell who has won. I don’t care.

That’s when I see it, right in the middle of the field: a single poppy. Poppy. The name on the last letter Emma sent me. I should have known I’d die before I got to see her. Should have known it was too good to be true. A little girl. A daughter. Poppy.

The sun dips under the blanket of clouds, and suddenly the sky is awash with flame. Colour seeps into the land, animating the corpses for a second. Blood shines as the earth drinks it in, turning death into life.

I wanted to win the war for Poppy. My baby, my little girl who I’ve never seen, but I love her.

I love her.

I love her.

Therapy

I can ignore the knot in my stomach if I want to. In fact, ignoring it is the easiest thing to do, as any psychologist will tell you. Even writing about it is the emotional equivalent of poking at a beehive: do it too much, and they will all spill out in an angry swarm and overwealm you. Running away is not an option. It will be painful. It may even be fatal.

And you can't just spray the whole thing with pesticide. As any ecologist will tell you, that's bad for the entire ecosystem: the world needs its bees. No, the best way to untangle the knot is to coax these bees out one by one with their own honey.

"What are you afraid of?"

A dozen of them buzz out of the knot. A couple sting, but the hurt is bearable. The knot is smaller, a little lighter.

"Why are you afraid of that?"

A couple more. Or several hundred, depending on what your reasons are. You don't have to say it all at once. You can start with a sentence, and then another, and when it gets too painful you stop and throw up your walls again while you heal.

You work through the pain, one sting at a time. Your pain tolerance builds up, and you can let out a couple, then a few more, a dozen.

And little by little, she gives you an entirely different world view, one that makes even the bees stop in their tracks. They stare at you, scratch their tiny heads, and say in their tiny buzzy voices, "Why the hell didn't we think of that?"

And you feel amazed and relieved and a little bit stupid. 

Of course, that's not the end of it. You still need to get rid of that reflex you have of hitting all the buzzy insects that cross your path. The road is long, and it takes work. But once you're there, you realize it's worth it. The bees buzz about their business, making the world more colourful, and once you're part of the hive, they won't sting you any more.