The Silent Soul

The rain pitter patters against the roof and he sits alone. The floor creaks as the worn-out wood of an old chair is slowly rocked against it. Much past the age of his prime he often ponders how he has ended up here. There are self-loathing days those thoughts escape his mind. Today was not one of the afore mentioned days and he recalls a time when he was living the high-life. The ripe young age of youth. Not old enough to drink, yet to immature to care. Skipping rocks off West 35, telling old haunted ghost stories while camping in "the yards" as we called the woods behind our houses. Just four young men who had simple and fun lives. Then came the age of eighteen where it all turned around. We were enlisted to fight and serve our Country. Seven years of nonstop gunfire, the deafening "BOOM" of a bomb going off or a car exploding and worst of all our girls back home and our families who lived in fear of the future and prayed for us every night. Johnny lost a leg. Billy lost an eye. Chet is still partially deaf in his right ear even with the hearing aid in. "Am I the lucky one?" i often ask myself. Some men, hundreds of men, hundred of thousands of men played russian roulette with their lives and they caught the bullet. Would i rather be dead than alone with no family? Would i rather have served like the true warrior i could have been at heart? I feel I've wasted my life and went from 18 to 80 in just a few years. What we gamble with is often all we have. The floor stops creaking, the rain lets up, everything was perfectly silent as the bullet cracked right through his head. The blood trickles through the floorboards to the ground water below, where maybe with a little bit of help, someone will know the true story of this silent soul.