Between the Dots and Dashes
I was born in the British trenches of 1941, to a man that put his pen to work. The spray of bullets and crash of bombs turned to simple white noise as he poured out his heart to me. I creased with the curve of the knee on which he leant, and felt thick desperation run from his heart through to the pen nib. Four long months of separation had taken its toll, and by now he imagined how her belly would have swollen to a considerable bump. As he thought on this, I remember so clearly hearing the loud pounding of his heart through the thin fabric of his uniform. Kicking at a dull piece of shrapnel that lay close by on the muddied floor, his fists balled. What could he possibly tell her about this life? News of the daily suffering was hardly appropriate, and he wasn’t even sure of his exact location, let alone what tomorrow held. I willed him to write on, my bare back a blank canvas for his thoughts. Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash By now the sun was blocked by a heavy m...