I Have Walked

In dusty boots, I have walked in abundance and bore witness to many and many horrors of men and of war. I say: I have walked through ruins and ruins, and ruins. I have walked upon the debris, upon the rubble, upon the wreckage of homes and of cities in great, great ruin. I say: I have witnessed many and many grotesque things. I have seen many and many grisly, grim, and gory scenes. Among the ruins, I have seen children clothes and children toys laying torn and broken.
I am scared. Tremors and trembles my body to the thoughts of such atrocities; I feel my body wanting to collapse on the floor as all the homes and buildings have. What will become of these places? What will be the end of this war? My fear is great. I fear for the the destruction, the trauma, the loss to both the people, to both the nations, to both their futures. The death gets me most of all; the death of the fathers, the death of the mothers, the death of the children. Their future, bleak and uncertain.
I live now, with flashes of morbid images and scenes and the incessant sounds of cries and rings, rings, rings. All burned deep, deep into my memory. The most vivid of all my memories are those, and only those, of the morbid things. My mind in constant state of fear, my stomach clenched with anxiety and freight. Unrelieved, physical exhaustion from always being on high alert. Constant, constant, constant—everlasting exhaustion. The nausea, the nausea, the nausea of the round-the-clock thoughts, running red, and the persisting fear.
It gets to me every time: the pressure and impulses of survival. Survival, survival, survival—it is all, and only, about survival. The significant have become the insignificant. It is only about survival now.
I live now, every moment in extreme, extreme, extreme, intensity. Tying to absorb every moment I live. To drink them and savor them—all the bits of happiness. Becoming acutely aware of every and every detail of every and every moment. Because, in this persisting state of fear, every moment feels like the final goodbye.