From a Trench

We’re dug in here and there is no message from the front. I can hear the Panzers growling. Every time I wave my helmet, I catch a bullet. There, caught another. I’ve been sending them to my wife in Kentucky. They have little messages on them. Things like: “A man stands alone at the top of the world” or “I have seen a million flies spell out your name.” My wife’s sewing circle is stitching them into a narrative. “Haloo from one brain to another,” she says, and I use my bayonet to carve this on a bullet to send over there. But of course I shoot myself in the head, and the war’s over before it really was begun.