Brutal Beauty

I am about to die, about to cease to exist.

And I am not afraid.

As I wait for the moment when my tenuous tie to life is snipped, as I wait to grasp the elusive idea of death, I feel so alive.

The sky is bright and blue- the kind of sky for happy days- and nowhere can I find the bleak gray horizon that should accompany battle.

The air is sweet and delicious, tasting of delicate little wildflowers and new spring grass, and I cannot smell gunpowder or death yet.

And this moment, the one before all others are stolen, may be the most lovely scene I have ever set eyes on.

The brave boys are running towards us, towards me. They scream a ghastly sound and it sends shivers up my spine to hear how they believe in what they fight for- even if not in words. They are a ragtag bunch, clad in clashing shades of gray, and decorated with stains of dirt and blood.

Their banner flaps and cracks in a definitive way, proudly, and it  is beautiful.

All those men- all those beings: men and mere boys together- running and holding onto their cause. And even though I don't agree with the cause, their cause, it is beautiful.

I am about to die for mine, and they for their's. A lovely, though ironic, sort of equality at the end. Because we are really the same, I think.

And I will die under my banner, flapping in the wind, beneath that peaceful blue sky- and he will die under his, under that same darling sky.

Such a scene of brutal beauty, it would be a sin to ruin it with fire.