Maria’s Wind

 

Each time the wind blows I think of home, a planet so many light years away from where we sit I get dizzy thinking about them.

I also get dizzy from the small of blood.

Our blood, their blood.

And I wonder if or when either side might run out of blood so one side might go home.

But both sides seem to have a supply so ample no amount of death can exhaust it so we keep fighting.

This wind isn’t like Maria’s wind since this is so full of grit I can’t keep it out of my eyes or nose or mouth.

Each painful breath makes me ache for clean air and cool springs, and those bright blue-skied days as a boy when I need not look to the heavens in fear of attack.

Sometimes – as if in a dream – I start out and see hill tops not filled with the thorny sides of the enemy’s weapons, but the bristle of green leafed trees my memory always recalls last in flames.

Whose side started what remains one of the great mysteries of the universe, thought both sides might take equal blame believing the fight over this world will lead to the solution.

We don’t talk of peace in the trenches here, thinking the only peace anyone might see will be too permanent a pace.

We speak of staying alive, or finding some small notch in the world where we can hold on until this conflict ends and we move onto the next.

I don’t ask anyone and no one tells me if – like me – they think of home. The places we knew have ceased to exist except in memory of the loved ones we saw butchered.

That moment drove us to seek revenge. But to tell you the truth, I can’t remember any of those old faces, only the last face I put to rest.

Is there as wind others remember the way I remember the wind on Maria?

Is there a stream we can still feel washing over their toes as boys?

I think the only thing I will remember is this wind when all is done, washing sand over me as I die.