All the Little Things

A soldier

slid the wooden stock of his rifle

between Henry’s legs and laughed.

He had been there the night before

when a German girl climbed Henry’s lap

and kissed his cheek

only to receive none in return.

You see, Henry could not lie down with whores

because he had two sisters at home.

Candice with her caramel-honeyed hair,

seven high bone freckles on each cheek,

and an expensive cleft palate scar.

And Lily, who smelled of citrus,

because she laced the teeth of her combs

with lemon juice

to brighten her hair during the short northern summers.

Her eyes more metallic than the bullets

kept in the chambers of Henry’s rifle

would do more damage

than any wound given by--

A gunshot

whistled over the top of the trench

and ripped a hole through the nape

of an officer’s neck.

He landed on the backs of his soldiers

after his body rolled off their shoulders,

they fought over

his boots.

Henry pressed his chest

against the mud lining of the trench wall

as a bloody-muzzled horse

thundered though the firebay

over the fallen bodies of parapet soldiers.

The remains of his rider’s leg,

stuck in the stirrup,

scraped up mud in the kneecap socket.

When the gelding trampled over the back

of the forgotten bootless officer,

the last particles of air in his lungs expelled in--

A puff of breath

escaped through the scar under Candice’s nose

in the nip of November air

when the first snow had fallen

heavy between the quiet aisles of apple trees

two winters before the war.

And little Lily cried

when snow soaked through the wool of her mittens.

She blamed the snowman they were building

for chilling all the little bones in her fingers

so Henry cleaved the snowman of its head

at the seams of the flannel scarf

and watched his sisters play

in the scattering snow

dotted with the tobacco rinds

from the snowman’s gunmetal pipe.

Henry smiled

and pulled his scarf over his teeth

to muffle--

A shudder

of a bullet pierced

the space between Henry’s right ribs .

He fell in the wake

of fragmented bones

scattered in his chest.

His eyes followed the sun-rays breaking through

heavy, German clouds

glinting off the blood that stained

a soldier’s teeth.

A color he knew

as the jams Candice was so fond of making

and would place in the windowsill,

just above the kitchen sink,

as a southern breeze wrapped

around the mason jars of raspberry jam.

The color of the velvet, maroon dress

Lily wore every Christmas Eve

before she popped the stitching at the shoulder .

But, Henry thought, It was mostly --

the color of the apples .

He would pick and place them in tan wicker baskets

his sisters wove for the orchard harvest .

Every year.

Before returning home

Henry would lie under the apple trees for hours

and count the dwindling sun rays

that glinted off the apples in—

A silence.