Tukarov

Tukarov was dead;

it seemed like only yesterday

we had danced at his wedding,

now his body lay quiet,

face down in the mud,

a gaping hole where

his chest had once been,

ripped apart by a 50 caliber shell

from a sniper’s gun;

I wondered if he had felt anything

as the bullet ripped through

his flesh,

tearing out pieces of his lungs

with it,

it couldn’t have been much

I thought,

he was dead before

he even hit the ground,

perhaps it was better this

way,

only a few months earlier

he had lost Ulena

in an air strike,

after that he had never

been the same;

“we must do something,

we must fight back,

we must not die like

sheep”;

he had insisted,

convincing me to

join the ‘cause’ with him,

now I could not

remember what

the ‘cause’ was,

only that I was cold

and afraid,

as I sat with the rest

of our patrol,

listening to our commander

brief us on tomorrow’s

raid,

wondering when this

nightmare would ever end;

Tukarov was dead,

long live Tukarov.

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