BOYISHLY scab picking, I regret that tick of boredom and see the drippings run. My father’s red hits the desk and my great grand-gheists cry out of the spongey wood: What battle? Wherefore dost thou bleed? Tell us son’s son, for whom, for what, do you suffer? Just this, I say chagrined. For an idle hatred of spreadsheets and deadlines and the hope of someday’s something soon. I have never smelled the shell-shocked earth, or heard soldiers’ swan songs in the fog. In vain, I fear, you rise to summon courage where courage isn’t tried. Enough, they echoed loudly, and about my seated self they whirling wheeled. That shameful head of mine they lifted till I saw some one of my elder incarnations in the lidless eye. We are but apparitions thou hast imagined. The guilty thought of things left unfinished or untried. On the field of melancholy, thou fights against only thee. And I, as awakened from some terrible dream, cast my hand upon the bloodied spot and wipe them all into happy oblivion.
The past sure echoes with glorious battles and hailed warriors and this day and age seems rather dull in comparison. On the one hand, it's good to be grateful to not be out there on the battlefield. On the other hand, something inside us still wants to be. Awesome story, AP.
I love this. It really gets to that universal sentiment of a writers self doubt. We are our greatest critics petrified by our own proud (apparent) insignificance.
Really good.