Let me walk with you and tell you what I see,
His story much more beautiful than me…
They will not cry, it’s trained out of them.
SAS ghosts and Paras grim, and with
CSOR retirees reborn to lead them…
“last“ photo snapped, “last“ home-vid made
beneath the war-torn bittersweet springtime skies,
all awash in sacred cornflower blue and sunflower gold,
and then—crying! Hugging! From these?!
Not just handshakes hard as gunmetal,
not just silences louder than artillery.
But that vid-clip’s back from March, his “retirement,”
his 55th birthday folding like a map into quiet.
But Cappy Gut-Check would not lie still,
so he snuck right back through S.O.L.,
[Shit Outta Luck & Soldiers of Light, both]
he wasn’t finished what he’d started,
Not while comrades —Ihor and Jakub—
still served those deep black soils of Ukrayina.
They went Northeast. Deep.
Where birch trees hush their breath
and the cold itself reports to Moskva.
An extremely expensive radar to blow up.
They like three shadows to do it.
At safe-house they were told,
Thirty-six Russians, evil spirits, in the forest,
Guarding that radar that had to go down.
“This is sooo Tango Foxtrot“, ol’ Aim For My Head said.
A mission only fools or martyrs would even try to finish.
“Some drones should finish what we at least tried.
We’re not for wasting on that metal prize.”
And when they asked, “Why stop?” he did not hide —
He told them of the fire behind my eyes.
So they made pact to just lie. Tasked to get eyes-on-target,
At least, but no eyes on target today, “On this one fuck the C.O.“
He had scrubbed it for he’d her to live for now, so no more
medals & insane suicide missions, just rushing to meet
all his lost treasures who have walked on for they have
whispered with each step as if Greek Chorus, telling
him, “We rest now, so we cannot do what you yet
can, therefore squander not your time for many are
the things that can be done on Grandma Earth that are
fully lost to the world of the spirits, like making love,
eating food, all the things that physicality affords.
Live before Grandma Earth takes you soon enough,
before you know it, truly, but until then LIVE for
none of us still can, Jason; live, live, live,“ echoing…
They turned their boots back towards home.
And just as the Pact of the Lie was agreed
he fidgeted and squirmed, and Jakub laughed:
“Just use the sat-phone and call her, Cappy!!“
So he did.
Told her he was done with war for good.
Told her to fly to Kraków, JPII.
Told her to run to him
as soon as she saw him,
and let them kiss—not as friends,
but a little more than friends,
just for a few fierce, rightful seconds…
Or minutes… or maybe hours. We’ll see.
He told da boys he was leaving.
They said, “M8, we already knew!
Like we knew when you came back
That you shouldn’t have. And now?
You’ve got someone that loves ya & she’d be crushed
if your body got shipped home wrapped in blue & yellow.
You’ve given so much more than enough—your daughter,
your wife, your ghosts too many to name.
We love you, more than word could ever tell,
but we hope we never see your old ass again.
Not even when this war is won, so
Go live your life, Cappy… be fuckin’ happy!“
But there’s no clean leave from the Front.
He walks southwestward now,
quiet boots through moss and dark,
half a map left to Kraków,
and her arms.
She waits too.
Rosary bruising her fingers.
Heart tethered to an unanswered call.
Her suffering is private, invisible—
but no less real.
A crucifixion by uncertainty,
stretched across weeks that feel like years.
What would Sassoon write
of the ones not in trenches,
but still torn open by them?
Of both men & women who hold breath
as long as men & women hold a trigger?
Of love unspoken
because survival has too high a cost?
They will camp in the Holy Cross Mountains,
where Europe’s very oldest stones
watch butterflies from Persia
and nightingales from Hind
dance above a pool so still
it might cradle the Lady of the Lake.
Not to give a sword,
but to take a rifle.
And at night?
No lights made by human hands,
just the Milky Way spilled like God’s wine.
The Perseids hurling fire.
And two animals, warm and wordless,
losing their names
and their pain.
He still wrestles.
Guilt is a scar that itches in peace.
He didn’t leave for revenge.
He stayed for love of humanity.
And leaving does feel like a betrayal?
Comrades are not friends.
They are more than even sons,
brothers made by fire, not blood.
To abandon them feels like blasphemy…
But he is coming.
He walks the long walk
back to her arms.
And she flies to meet him—
her ticket bought, her courage borrowed
from the same fire that forged his war.
They will kiss.
And be just friends again.
But something will shift.
From Kraków’s old air,
to under Polska’s green canopy,
something ancient and holy will conspire.
And in a final secret he does not yet know—
she has bought a house,
just one and a half blocks from his.
In Moose Jaw,
Where winters are cruel,
and love must be worn like wool.
There,
beneath auroras and -40° nights,
they will survive.
And maybe,
when frost numbs guilt and fingers both,
his hands will accidentally find hers.
And maybe
they’ll kiss again,
not instead of friendship,
but because of it.
And maybe,
if Aphrodite’s whisper rides the howling wind,
they will drink the wine of gods
and leap,
not fall,
into something sacred.
