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lycanthrope
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Dear Erin,
We leave for the front lines tomorrow morning. I am perfectly willing to sacrifice, to fight, to lay down my life and forfeit all that I have and may have for others opportunities. They may not have been experiences i've known, but they're ones i've dreamt about. Like seeing our children playing on a front yard somewhere in a brand new house. I'll die for these dreams if I must, if another person in this world believes in their cause enough to kill me, either sordidly or directly. I'd much rather see the face of the man who kills me if i were to die. These dreams and experiences i fight and die for are ones i know others would want for me, that only fear ever held me from, and if I return I cannot say i'll ever be the same, if there are things worth dying for, there are things worth living for. You see, I kill people everyday. Please don't think any less of me, remember me how i was. Our commanders try to keep them faceless, but I know they have faces just like me - they are sons and fathers and brothers and husbands and i am stealing from mothers and and daughters and sisters and wives. With every well placed bullet i am killing two lovers. I am violating humanity to protect it. Yet I firmly believe our leaders would not send their young, their lifeblood, their future off to kill and be killed, were it not the most utterly necessary of sacrifices. If the cause of my life is a building block for, a fodder for some frivolous impermanent cause, if it is disreguarded by old men laughing and smoking cigars in some far off distance hidden room, away from the pain and glory i am knee deep in everyday, then i am shattered to apathy anyways. If I am fighting for the right to economic pillage, if it is this i kill good men, make short lived hell of idyllic landscapes for, well then this is not a world I want to live in anyways. The quicker we kill each other, the quicker the shallow scars we've carved into the earth can re-surrender to the still, patient colorful fight of poppies and cool breezes. I love you and the children, I love my country, I love my fellow man, but I am asked to be a killer and a victim, and I have sincere faith in their requests. If that is what is wished of me, then that is what I'll do. May those beyond the struggle, years from now, may any transcendant god or state of being who looks at me with the blood of comrades and strangers all around and sees me screaming and fighting- may they not judge me too harshly. May they see me in the world, dancing with you, playing with our children, reading novels of great drama and turmoil, and never understanding. I only know certainly that i miss you, and that we've been ordered to move tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Private John Ramos
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020328
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