08-03-2020, 06:45 PM
EDIT - I messed around with the last paragraph to clarify the notion of debt, what the "fruits" are, and to make the paragraph as a whole more coherent to the theme. Thanks as always for feedback:
Margaret Elizabeth Elliott was laid to rest next to Arthur, the bride that he could claim thanks to the atomic bomb.
He was drafted into WW2 and had the pleasure of serving in some of the most inglorious campaigns of the war. There wasn’t much joy for the Yankees, their green leaves quickly sucked dry and brown in the desert air of North Africa. And then, it was on to Italy, with unquenchable wet socks for months on end. His toenails dissolved in the noble Roman mud and fertilized the olive hills.
“Be ready to go to Honshu. You will go but you won’t come home.” The red circumference of pride will burn up all of our boys. The message, loud and clear: “You’ll stop being a being and be returned to being a thing.” But it didn’t happen; instead two mushroom suns burned alive a quarter million faces.
Those missing faces paid his way home. He and Margaret planted seeds whose fruits were debts impossible to quantify or pay. In the end, he'd lived so long, before they’d even put him in the ground he’d walked off and left his living corpse vacated. His descendants paid their respects, throwing handfuls of dirt like alms into the deep well of charity granted them by chance and delivered through the inert clay vessel in its varnished oak case, finally reclaimed deep down below, seventy years after his number was up.
Margaret Elizabeth Elliott was laid to rest next to Arthur, the bride that he could claim thanks to the atomic bomb.
He was drafted into WW2 and had the pleasure of serving in some of the most inglorious campaigns of the war. There wasn’t much joy for the Yankees, their green leaves quickly sucked dry and brown in the desert air of North Africa. And then, it was on to Italy, with unquenchable wet socks for months on end. His toenails dissolved in the noble Roman mud and fertilized the olive hills.
“Be ready to go to Honshu. You will go but you won’t come home.” The red circumference of pride will burn up all of our boys. The message, loud and clear: “You’ll stop being a being and be returned to being a thing.” But it didn’t happen; instead two mushroom suns burned alive a quarter million faces.
Those missing faces paid his way home. He and Margaret planted seeds whose fruits were debts impossible to quantify or pay. In the end, he'd lived so long, before they’d even put him in the ground he’d walked off and left his living corpse vacated. His descendants paid their respects, throwing handfuls of dirt like alms into the deep well of charity granted them by chance and delivered through the inert clay vessel in its varnished oak case, finally reclaimed deep down below, seventy years after his number was up.
(08-01-2020, 09:40 PM)Valerie Please Wrote: Margaret Elizabeth Elliott was laid to rest next to Arthur, the bride that he could claim thanks to the atomic bomb.
He was drafted into WW2 and had the pleasure of serving in some of the most inglorious campaigns of the war. There wasn’t much joy for the Yankees, their green leaves quickly sucked dry and brown in the desert air of North Africa. And then, it was on to Italy, with unquenchable wet socks for months on end. His toenails dissolved in the noble Roman mud and fertilized the olive hills.
“Be ready to go to Honshu. You will go but you won’t come home.” The red circumference of pride will burn up all of our boys. The message, loud and clear: “You’ll stop being a being and be returned to being a thing.” But it didn’t happen; instead two mushroom suns burned alive a quarter million faces.
And so he came home and planted seeds whose fruits were debts impossible to quantify or pay. In the end he walked off and left his living corpse vacated before they’d even put him in the ground. His descendants paid their respects, throwing handfuls of dirt like alms into the deep well of charity granted them by chance and delivered through the inert clay vessel in its varnished oak case, finally reclaimed deep down below, seventy years after his number was up.