The Poppy Field
She wakes me up and calls for me to attend to her. I’m laying in something viscous, of which I promptly get away from by pushing myself until I stand up. A bone crackles beneath my foot as I move forward. It must be an ulna, or perhaps a radius due to its length and brittleness at shattering in two. Ahead of me stretches a poppy field beyond what the eye can see, a mix of grass green with diverse violets of the flowers, interrupted by many white and red dots. These are the human remains splattered over the terrain. Holed skulls, tendons exposed to the flies, femurs sharpened to the point of being stalagmites surfacing from the earth, soldier’s vests waving like white flags in the wind. Pieces of men became a whole in part of the idyllic landscape. In the center of it all, there’s a lone figure kneeling over a cut of meat, mourning. It’s Ada, my mistress and lady, dressed all in black with a large veil that reaches her feet standing up and now that she’s sitting down spreads all o...