-Televassi-

Footsteps

I think it’s important that we remember the truth. Keep that in mind.  Nostalgia fills in all the cracks in our memories, and that’s not honest. It is only right to tell you my experience, the important bits, with none of the filler.

If you listen, you’ll learn what you taught me about love. It’s not that cliché love that strikes unexpectedly like a lightning bolt, but I don’t think that was your point.

Love is a drug; a cure that sets the soul free from the flesh.

***

I remember pacing in the quiet of the evening, back and forth, between the fits of coughing that would leave me doubled over the sink. I don’t know why I first started doing it, but once I did, the movement made it easier to forget. I would walk from one mouldy wall to the other, ignoring the peeling paint. Turning on heel, I kept trying to believe I was somewhere else. Moving from the sink, I went to peer out at the sky.

Usually I kept the shutters on the windows closed, filtering the sundered clouds between the slats. The skies those days were mostly grey; the sunsets a mire of brown and vulgar orange, caused by gasses we used during The War. Frankly, the decades of environmental neglect before it didn’t help either. I watched the maroon clouds swirl about, thinking that The War was one huge mistake; it was written across the sky - the message hard to ignore. This, the world said, was what humanity had done.

I shut the blinds. It was an unwelcome reminder of my part in that conflict, and I was powerless to do anything to remedy it. If guilt cannot be absolved, you spend your time trying to forget. That’s what the pacing was for. I had to keep moving, like an animal, if I was to have any chance of losing myself. Otherwise my mind would be stuck picking at the scabs of old wounds. Despite my best efforts, some memories lingered.

I was a soldier. Both sides (and for the sake of sensitivity, I will give no names, but you can guess) used chemical weapons. I’m not talking mustard gas, or the unrefined stuff they used over a hundred years ago. They were real weapons – engineered to perfection to do one specific thing. The aim was to gain the greatest advantage, and I know it will seem counter-productive. It’s like the landmines used in the past – you don’t want to kill the soldier outright, you want to blow off a limb, so he’s as good as dead. He can’t fight, and is a drain on resources. In my case, it played havoc with my lungs. Now I’m coughing up blood most days.

That’s why I wished to forget.

I wanted to free myself from my part in making this world the mess it is today. I wanted to forget every time I was bent double, spitting blood into the sink. I wanted to forget I was human. No one wishes to be reminded of each second trickling away; more so, no one wishes to keep suffering for past sins. They don’t say it, but punishment only gives absolution if it has an end. Once paid, we can pretend things were the way they were.

You see, the sky was just one of those debts still unpaid.