| MO(U)RNING THOUGHT (this is a dream that I had one morning When I woke up I tried to write it down quickly before forgetting it. I found that I had to embellish the names and some of the circumstances in order to capture the feeling I had upon awakening - RS) By this time, I had thought that fatigue and despair had gotten the best of me. But there he was, just the same, standing in front of me. Except now he was young -joyful and pure- just as I had known him back in our school days, days more like remembered cinema than of events in my life, days so very different from what was to follow. The morning sun was displaying the splendor of its impersonal rays, golden barbs of rainbow and refraction. Some found their way into the house through the small panes, and one even entered into my eye, and by way of co-incidence with this vision, also into my awakening heart. I sat there bewildered, unbelieving. Yet this youth was real. He was flesh and blood, and he had obviously just stepped into this kitchen on his way to some greater new adventure. By his side he had attracted a young and curious girl as fresh and as pure as himself. At this sight I felt some of the pain ease, a release of some of what I had carried since my friends unjust and terrible death. Or perhaps the pain had swelled at his memory and now simply ebbed slightly at this fantasy of his re-incarnation. The sight of this particularly weary soldier seemed to trouble the boy -in the way that only youth can be troubled- for he smiled even more, though somewhat nervously, and stepped forward, hand outstretched in order to make a proper introduction. So that was it. My friend had had a son. And he was the living likeness of my dear friend in youth. And now I chuckled, or grumbled, or did whatever I do these days when something brings me closer to that forgotten feeling which we call happiness. It made sense in a way that few things ever do in life. The war had been long, much longer than anyone had ever feared. There was the long nights of the siege of the city. And the incessant shelling. And there was Ilyana. I had wondered blankly at her kindness for keeping me here at her home, not capable of thinking of any kind of love for myself anymore. Yet somehow I had thought it was for my consolation that she often asked about the events of the war -and about my friend's death.
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