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You see the war everywhere, tin soldier, you see it in everything.
You see burning in the steam from a teacup, see dive bombs in cubes of sugar, splashing into the sea- tea.
You see soldiers in a close cropped haircut, in a flash of metal around the neck and a jumpy shoulder on fireworks night.
You taste the war on his lips in the middle of the night, when he wakes up in a cold sweat, when he tastes of salt and fear and in the morning when he tastes of poorly toasted bread with jam and tentative safety.
You see gunmetal in the hardness behind his eyes and battles in the way he fights to wake up every day.
But feel ceasefires when he presses his face into your neck and you have never felt more at peace with anyone.
Because when you are with him, soldier boy, you are no longer a soldier. You are a lover and a friend and you are his.
&
Sometimes he scares you, truly scares you with how much he loves you, when you tell him of your fear, your nightmares, and there isn't a trace of mirth in his voice when he tell he will protect you til the day he dies, he will kill everything you fear. It scares you but you still feel safer caged in his arms than you ever did when you were a free man.
Other things scare you, not as much as war, not as much as him, but enough that you still don't hold hands when you walk around town, enough that he has never spoken to your landlord because his stilted, accented way of twisting his tongue to your language will throw the pretence that you are brothers.
Enough that you sometimes believe that you will never tell your mother about him. The only other person that knows is another soldier, you imagine the only reason that he doesn't judge you is because when you go through hell and back with someone, you lose the right to judge them on the small things.
Not that he is a small thing, he is the biggest thing to you, larger than life, he consumes your everything. And you give it to him with a smile because he gives you just as much in return.
He is your truest love and your biggest fear and the only thing you would die for anymore.
&
One day, you will tell people about him. About you and him. As the single unit that you are, have been since you met, because, really, you must have been cut from the same cloth, split from the same star, it's the only explanation for the way you can read him printed in bold black ink when others see him in a language that they can't understand. The only reasoning for the way you slot together like gun and bullet, dangerous together, useless on your own.
It explains why you taste gunpowder on his fingers, why there's always a new hole in the wall above his seat when you're gone too long.
You will be afraid to tell your father. Afraid to see the breaking in his eyes when you say the truth.
Do not be afraid.
No, he will not be happy, yes, he will shake his head in that way, will grip his paper till it tears down the middle like your heart.
But you are young and in love. And he is just a man.
And yes he will shout, and he will vow never to speak to you again.
But you have fought for this country, young man, and maybe he has too, but you have come away with more hope and love than when you started. And he is just.
A bitter, old.
Man.
&
You can't marry him, not yet, maybe not ever, but you can ask, with a ring that you had bashed out of a dead man's dog tags with the taste of his blood behind your teeth, and it shouldn't be romantic, all things considered, but when he smiles, open mouthed and teeth like the cliffs of Dorset, like home, it looks like the fucking sun has dropped out of the sky and landed right in his throat. So you figure you did good.
And maybe it isn't a real wedding, but you wear your second best shoes, the ones that your heels slip out of when you walk, and he wears your second best suit and it feels like one. Especially when your sister kicks him out of your room and tell you that you can't see the groom before the wedding.
It's not real but your sister pouts and says I can't believe you beat me to it and you have a best man, and there's a priest who gives you a slip of paper to sign.
It's almost too much to handle but when you stand outside the church, your father will walk up to you in a good suit and shined shoes, and he will smile when you call him dad, and lead you up the aisle with a proud set to his shoulders, as if to say, this is my son and he's turned out alright.
You tell him your vows in French and his tongue trips over his English words and maybe God doesn't think this as real but your god abandoned you the afternoon you left that bloody beach with it's fiery water, so you don't mind all that much.
When you dance with him you put your face in his neck and breathe him in instead of air, he clings to you like he's drowning all over again. Over his shoulder, you see a boy in a red jumper under a brown suit jacket play with the fingers of a brown haired boy and decide that if this is the only thing you've inspired, it's a good legacy.
They smile at you and join the people on the dance floor. The blonde boy's father sits next to your own and the two of them look so proud you could cry. So you do, quiet and broken into his collar and he just keeps you spinning, his laugh less tightly packed in his throat that before.
&
You may not live to see a time when you will hold a beautiful, curly-haired boy's hand in the light of the day, to see a day when you can kiss in coffee shops and parks and streets like everyone else.
But your mother still smooths the plastic of her photo album over your smiling faces just as reverently and your sister will never treat you differently, your father doesn't look at you like you are someone other than his only son, and you still belong to him.
To a boy that doesn't always know what the words for je t'aime are in your language but will always know what you are saying. A boy who has lost his home and burrowed his way into your heart, made a new home there.
A boy with whom you would happily watch the world end. You've done it before, anyway.
&
The end of your world does not come as you thought it might when you were just twenty years old- back then you thought the world would explode, shattered into a million pieces by a bullet or a bomb, you thought the world's end would be the fault of some nation that you were fighting, because you are a soldier through and through-
But when your world ends, it's his fault, the boy you love, ends it for you.
Because when you reach the end of the world, you reach it alone. Because on a rainy November morning, he closes his eyes (I'm tired Tommy, Je suis fatigue, let me just rest) and he doesn't ever open them again.
The end doesn't explode, just crumbles, breaks apart like a biscuit in a teacup, slow and you watch it coming, expect it, know it's happening. But it doesn't stay together, nonetheless.
You still see the war in everything, tin man, in every cup of tea, every boy with shaking hands, every grave that shouldn't be planted in the earth. Graves that have no right to be plot so early, in the wrong soil in the wrong time, holding the wrong man.
A man that you will never hold again.
And this is how the world ends, soldier, there is no glory in it, no bang, just a whimper. You realise that it comes from your own lips.