He exhaled slowly as the cold water beat down onto his chest. The water trickled down as the cold spread through his numb body. Slowly his goose-flesh became more and more obvious to him. He let his head come directly under the shower, the water drowned out the screaming in his head. He could hear himself breathe. He felt it. The pain was creeping up on him. His lungs tightened.

He finally stepped out of the shower. His towel wrapped around his waist. His dog-tags were still dripping. He walked to his bed. A letter was open on his bunk. He tried to avoid looking at it. He remembered reading it last night. He started breathing deeply, his eyes were turning red. He put on his camouflage pants, then picked up his iPod and turned it up to full volume.

Where are we...what the hell is going on...

He picked up his sidearm and checked his uniform in the window of the humvee parked outside the block. His eyes were still red from the crying last night. The music was deafening. He didn’t realise how they made their way from the base to the redzone.

The dust has only just begun to fall,
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling.
Spin me round again and rub my eyes.
This can't be happening.

He saw what had happened to the city. Overnight it had been shattered into an entangled mass of bodies, metal and sand. The walls were painted red with blood and the street smelled of burnt flesh.

When busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy.

He slung his gun on his shoulder and rubbed his eyes with both his hands. A tear left his eye, and trickled down his cheek, leaving a trail or wet dirt as it made its way down his cheek

Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines.
All those years they were here first.

Everywhere he saw the dead were lying still and the alive were praying to Allah, telling him to accept their loved ones into heaven graciously. The buildings had cracks from the explosions that had ravaged the city the last night. A burning “Happy Bir...”sign was thrown out of a shattered home’s window. His eyes followed it while it floated to the ground leaving a trail of smoke behind it.

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before.
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this
still life.

Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines. (Oh, you won't catch me around here)
Blood and tears,

They were here first.

He didn’t hear his sergeant screaming for him to get down, he didn’t hear the gunfire, he didn’t hear the screaming woman as a rogue bullet hit her and she fell beside her dead husband whom she was weeping over. He heard nothing, he only heard his heart beat, he could see his wife back home, and she was smiling. He remembered the papers lying on his bunk,

Hmm, what you say?
Hmm, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.
Hmm, what you say?
Hmm, that it's all for the best? Ah of course it is.
Hmm, what you say?
Hmm, that it's just what we need? And you decided this.
Hmm what you say?
What did she say?

He started running through the streets, he turned into the tiniest lanes, the darkest alleys, and he was just running. He didn’t hear his company screaming his name behind him, He didn’t even see where he was going, he could only see his wife, she meant the world to him, and last night he had to let go of her. He didn’t know what had happened, he was away, far away. He had promised her he’d keep her as a princess, his princess, her knight in shining armour. So what had gone wrong? He stopped running.

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth.
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs.
Speak no feeling, no I don't believe you.
You don't care a bit. You don't care a bit.

He was crying, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back as he fell to his knees. He had decided he wanted to have a child with her. Now that would not happen. He tried to think waht their child would be like. He opened his eyes and through the tears he saw him. Standing right in front of him, a small boy, probably 12 years old he thought. He smiled at the child, held out his arms towards his boy; he could see her eyes in him.

The boy raised an AK-47 and squeezed the trigger, mercilessly not knowing why this enemy of Allah had come and destroyed his family. The marine fell silently to the ground, smiling, and his last tears hit the sand and vanished. The iPod headphones screamed silently into his dead ears,

You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.

The doorbell rang in Dallas three weeks later, she opened the door and a marine was standing outside. He saluted her and deposited her husband’s belongings before leaving the war widow. She cried for him, as she went through his stuff, there she found the envelope she had sent him. She tore it open, it was resealed; he must have seen it before he went out. She wished this had not happened this way.

Inside was a note she had sent, stained with his tears, saying how she had fallen in love with an accountant from Boston and she was sorry. And the other papers which she had signed already and needed his signature. The marine had signed the divorce papers before he went to the war that day, He loved her enough to set her free.