Shot Through The Heart

For Dodger

They say you never hear the shot that kills you. The sickening crack of the bullet is reserved for other ears. All you know is the shock of the bullet plunging into your flesh, a whirl of colour, blood spurting from the wound, as you fall oh, you think, oh, oh…

You hit the ground.

 They say it’s better that way, better that the pain is not drawn out. But then who can say what a wealth of pain the dying feel, when Eternity can be held in one spinning second.

I’ve imagined it a thousand times, lying sleepless in my lonely bed, or sitting staring at an empty hearth. If I try to see it in my minds eye, if I picture it enough times, perhaps I will begin to believe it. I want to be able to realize it, to know in my very bones that he is gone. It’s been a week since the telegram and I haven’t shed a tear.

I had a letter from your friend- Mark Coolridge. Private. Bullet through the heart, he said. Over in a moment. He was a fine man, spoke of you often. A hero. He felt no pain.

I wonder, is that true? Or is he lying, hoping to spare my feelings? Did you die screaming, in agony? Did death take days as your wounds festered and your mind curdled? When the end finally came, did you think of me?

I’m not the only one. Every day another wife becomes a widow, another mother looses her son. The casualty list grows. The war looms in our collective consciousness, a bloated monster, slavering jaws open wide, an enormous appetite which cannot be sated.

I loved him. They don’t understand that, none of them. Three months of marriage, and he was snatched away from me. It was too soon. You’re young, they ooze, and time heals all wounds. They think I’m nothing but a self- pitying child. Kindly neighbours console me, smiles pasted to their faces, pretending to understand. Underneath their shallow pity I know they despise me. They think I’m selfish because I won’t go back to the factory anymore. (How can I go on making the bullets that killed you?) Again and again that phrase- Don’t you know there’s a war on?

I want to scream. I want to pull down the blackout curtains and trample them underfoot, take my ration book and shred it to pieces, throw it in their faces, keep you’re two and a half ounces of cheese! YES, I know there’s a war on, do they really think it’s possible, for one moment of my waking life, to forget it? The anger rips through my veins, my heart swells with it. I’m shaking.

I rifle through the drawers, spilling clothes onto the floor, trampling them underfoot. Seams rip. Buttons snap. Clothes lie in a crumpled puddle at my feet.

My wedding dress. Ahh. Yellow silk, adapted from one of my old party frocks- no extravagance because there is a war on, you know. It stands motionless in my closet, the ghost of my former happiness. I fall to my knees before it and bury my face in it’s folds. I think, My God, it is so beautiful

You would’ve laughed to see me, my darling, kneeling in front of that dress almost as though I were praying to it. I could hear your voice, with that patronising edge that used to enrage me so

“Silly, it’s only a dress.”

Then you would help me up, wipe away the tears stinging my cheeks. Gently you tilt my chin up to yours, just as you did on our wedding day, you’re kiss so soft on my mouth, and you’re hands placed so lightly on my waist as if you thought I might snap in too if you pressed too tight.

Dreams. You will never kiss me again. You’re lips are cold and blue, you’re flesh is already beginning to rot.  You’re eyes, those same blue eyes that used to drive the girls wild, stark open, astonished at death. Did they have time to shut you’re eyes, before dumping you in the grave? I hate to think of it, the earth piling in on you, filling your eyes and you not able to blink it away.

I’ve heard sometimes they leave corpses out, unburied on the battlefield and the rats… Is that what happened to you? This friend of yours, this Mark Coolridge, would he let that happen?

I am crouching in the middle of the room, surrounded by a storm of clothing, yours and mine …. I feel horribly calm. My rage, my violent choking anger, has left me.

My mind is packed with words, like bees in a hive crawling over one another, filling my brain with a senseless drone.

.i love you, my darling, i love you and you left me you bastard and just look at the mess i’ve made i’ll have to tidy up first, then i’ll get you you’re tea, lamb chops, you’re favourite and did the brains burst from you’re skull such a dreadful mess and what happened to  the letters i sent you or was i too late and why don’t you write and more i’m so lonely it’s not true it can’t be oh god oh god oh god…

I leap to my feet. “I’ll do it.” I announce, purposefully. “I swear it, I will.” What it is I have just sworn to do I have not the faintest idea but it the clarity of my determination to do something makes me feel better.

I gather up a bundle of the clothes lying around me and throw them out of the window. That’s better- now I can think. I try not to imagine them falling, all you’re nice shirts and trousers lying in the mud… It had to be done- see?

I take my wedding dress down from the hanger and lay it tenderly on the carpet before me. I take the scissors from my sewing basket and begin to cut it up into even strips. Bandages. No they’re thinner than that. Ribbons.

"He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons,

To tie up my bonny brown hair

And it’s dear, dear, what can the matter be

Oh dear what can the matter be

Dear dear what can the matter be

Johnny’s so long at the fair..”

I sing blithely as I work. Done now. I gather up the smooth ribbons in my arms and toss them into the air and watch them spiral back down to earth. Some brush my face as they fall. It’s enough. Surely that’s enough for anyone?

Tomorrow I shall take each ribbon and tie them onto the bushes by the lane. It will be our secret. Passers by will stop and stare. What does it mean, they’ll wonder. Only you and I know. No, that’s not true. It is only I because you’re

DEAD

I curl up in my nest of shredded silk and weep.