His name was John

My name is Emma.

I have only loved once and once was enough.

I see him wondering the autumn forest as I stroll along the path. He smiles at me and I smile back.

This is where we met.

I see him smiling at me with his wonderfully imperfect teeth that somehow makes me smile at any moment of the day.

The way I looked at him, the way he looked at me;

Impeccable.

We look around and smile at each other.

It was like our minds had a queue to begin the magical song that played in our minds all at once we started dancing. We twirled like birds through the air. For we were in love.

The cold air flowed through our arms and legs as we danced through the for what it seemed like magical forest.

It was him and I alone and in love. Like a fairy tale if you would.

He lifted me up and smiled at me. He kissed my lips and then my cheeks. As if one kiss wasn’t enough.

The feeling of his soft face touching mine was like thousands of tingles flowing through my body.

Perhaps this is what love actually feels like.

He placed me down and kissed me once more, this time more romantically.

“I love you” he said to me.

I never did get tired of that. Hearing it always makes me smile , it runs through my veins like a thousand joggers trying to win a race to my heart.

He continued to look me in the eyes and smile.

He suddenly stopped smiling at me and looked away into the distance.

He became scared.

“My love what is it?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer.

The orange forest turned bleak and dark.

Gunshots, gun shots were fired.

“My love! My love!” I cry. He does not answer.

The air became still and sadness flew across the floors of the dying forest.

I now kneel before your lifeless face as I pay my respects. I lean in to kiss your battered face, my tears roll down to the back of his neck as I say my final goodbye. As I turn to see the somewhat familiar faces,

They greet me with kindness as I stay next to my sleeping love.

“Deeply sorry for your loss dear” they all said, over and over again. Like a broken record.

A women walks up to me with ease.

“Sorry to be abrupt but my name is Linzy, I was a friend of johns is high school” she quietly said.

“You two must have been the best of friends. He did get along with almost everybody he met” I smiled.

“Yeah I remember we used to get into trouble together in the halls”

“Ah so that was you?” I asked. She suddenly became confused. I smiled.

“I went to the same high school as you, I went to the same classes and graduated with you” I admitted.

“But we haven’t met before”

“Clearly John was the only person to give the quiet girl a piece of his time” she became quiet as she quickly became embarrassed that I remembered who she was.

“Im sorry” she said quietly.

“Its ok, I got to spend most of my life with him, I will cherish the memories I share and hold them deeply close to me”

She got quiet and soon looked down at me ring and smiled.

“Ah I see you guys have wed” she smiled hoping the ease off the embarrassment.

She didn’t.

“Actually my wedding day was supposed to be today”

She turned red.

“Please its ok, i'm fine. Today it is supposed to be a day of remembering what was and not what is” I smiled.

She hugged me and walked away, maybe she thought she shouldn't have set anything more

I watched the priest walk in. I turned to him and smiled at my husband.

“Good bye my love”

Trying to hold my tears in my face, I feel the coldness of the handle on the casket cover. The casket closed. I sit down in front alongside his family. They all cried as I kept my “cool” if you will.

“He died a good cause” the men bellowed.

As I stare at him, my love, his commander breaks my concentration has he hands me his folded flag.

“You’re a brave women” he smiled with a tear rolling down his face. I look at him blankly as I clench the flag with my hand in pain.

This was my down fall. Coming to realization that the person, the person who out of seven billion people, he was mine and he wasn’t ever coming back.

It actually hurt.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

The priest says his prayer.

I wait for everybody to leave the room. It was just him and I. We’re finally alone.

I walk quietly up to him and stroke his cheek as I always did.

I try not to stare at his chest. If I did I would swear he was still breathing.

I kiss his cheeks and then his forehead.

At this point I was not sad nor mad.

I wasn’t anything.

I lean into his ear and whisper

“I will see you soon my love”

His name was John.

“She” is my inspiration.

I look at her as one of the strongest women I know.

I walk along side with her through the woods near my old house,

I can’t help but stair at her enormous beauty.

Her hair flows graciously through the wind as if that were its job.

She smiles at me with her perfect white teeth. Suddenly her smile turns to a frown.

“My love what is wrong?” I ask her as she buries her face in my chest. “My love tell me” I plead to her once again.

She looked up at me, black infested tears roll down her face as I attempt to wipe them away; it was hard to keep up.

I could tell what was wrong by the look on her face.

“I will be back, one way or another I will be back I promise” I smiled at her and kissed her goodbye.

As I stand in line to get on my plane, I watch my soon to be wife stand before me and watch her best friend leave her for months.

How could I do this to her?

How could I cause so much heart break on one person and at the same time fight to protect her?

Nobody said this was easy.

Nobody also said it was this hard.

I forced my goodbye wave to my love, I see her crying.

I feel terrible.

I landed.

As I stand on the plane I wait for my orders, I hear screams.

My first day I hear screams.

I wait on the endless moments for my orders to arrive.

“GO! GO! GO!” is all I heard from outside the plane.

I heard a large boom.

It soon got quiet.

Peeking through the windows I look outside and see nothing but bodies, bodies covered in red, and body parts scattered every inch of land. Quietly I walk up to the door and prop it open.

“Were you given orders?” a tall man holding a large gun, a gun almost the size of himself.

I reply with a “no sir”. The man smiled at me and patted me on the shoulder.

“Even in the worst of times, a fellow marine solutes his commander, I like you” he laughed in his deep voice.

We walked for a while looking for survivors, we found two.

We found shelter and somehow made it through that night.

More men came that morning and took us back to their base.

“You seem tired” the commander said.

I remember I looked at him with a “No shit” kinda face.

He always laughed at me as if we had been friends for decades.

I guess that was a good sort of thing now was it.

That night I got to the vase, I remember my bed was extremely uncomfortable and for some reason wet. But hey at least I had a bed that night I guess.

I laid back with one thing on my mind. Her. I smiled every time I thought about her, the way she smelled, and the way her hair flew in the wind and sometimes into her face. I even remember the way her own house smells. I miss her. I saved all two hundred and three of the letters she sent me. It started to take up space, but the men who had no one actually liked to read the letters. It gave them hope.

I stayed on base for a year and a half, nothing out of the sort happened. Eventually a lion would pounce into town. Never bothered me much. As long as I wasn’t his lunch. Nothing bad happened until my last day.

I woke up that night with my room on fire.

The flames burned at a raging heat. Covering my face I quickly jumped through the door. Glass shattering everywhere.

I turned around with caution, men running through the fields with black masks on their heads.

They came at us.

“Come on!”

Pulling my back, the commander lifted my shirt from the back of me. Lifting me to my feet. I run as fast as I can to the gate way, my plane.

Shots were fired. Men along side of me fell to their death.

Blood spewing from bodies.

I tried not to look anywhere but forward.

That was my way of seeing Emma, just a few steps closer and I was there. I hit home base. I take in my deep breaths of air.

As I hear more screams I look around the plane. “Where is commander?” I yelled.

Nobody would answer me

“Commander where is he?” I screamed once more.

“He’s not here yet, we must go!” the pilot yelled.

I remember I threw the par shoot off my body and I flew out the plane.

Running as fast as I could looking for my friend, I signed as a man holding a gun to my head, screaming in a different language , he kept yelling at me and to this day I still don’t know what he fuckin said. Oh well.

The gun pointed to my head. It was cold and hard.

I laid down on the ground and closed my eyes.

I cringed as I heard the trigger click.

The shot was fired from a gun. Hearing a body collapse to the ground, I hear running footsteps. My body was turned around, still alive I didn’t move.

I was damn near stunned. Grabbing my hand, he pulled me up off the ground and smiled quickly.

“Let’s go! Move!”

I run as fast as I could. I see the plane, I see my gate way.

A shot was fired.

I now lay stiff in my forever bed. I watch as the comers stand by me with wet face that just so happen to drip on my nice uncomfortable clothes.

I smell the scent of my own body, I never did like this smell.

The smell of flowers and sadness.

Wasn’t a good mixture.

I see my one and only walk in bravely up to me. She cries at the sight of me. Eh I don’t blame her wasn’t that good looking.

My parents than followed her, my father and mother walk up to me, my poor mother barley taking a breath between each sob.

My father, bravest man I’ll ever get to meet, cried. Didn’t think I’d ever see that. He placed his hand on my head and said.

“Im proud”

Following my parents was my grandmother, she didn’t seem too sad. She was always thought death was a new family reunion where you get to meet people you’ve never met.

Perhaps after my funeral she will be right.

Throughout the whole ceremony, my love stood by my side as I would have hoped her too.

I look up at all the familiar faces, and wonder what their thoughts are seeing me in my uniform , dead laying here as if im a piece of meat for show.

I am angered that I will no longer share a life with my wife. I am angered that I will not be able to have a child with the love of my life. I am angered that I let a man whom I did not even know for more than three seconds of my life take my life.

I am not angry that I saved my commanders life.

I watch my fellow commander lean over the rail near my bed and sigh. He smiled flakily and looked up at me as he pinned metals to my chest. He saluted me.

To this day I don’t know why he saluted me or whatever the pins meant, apparently it was something important.

I than watch my commander place my flag into my darlings hands. I saw her shaking. She then took a deep breathe of bravery and placed the flag into her lap.

After the sad part of over, everybody left and said their final goodbyes.

I found this weird cause this was what people should have been doing in the first place before I left in the first damn place.

I now lay before my love as she is the last one to walk up to me. She is not crying and she doesn’t look mad. She simply smiled and stroked my cheek as she always did. She than kissed my cheeks and my lips and lastly my forehead and whispered into my ear.

“I will see you soon my love”

Her name was Emma.