I miss you so. It has now been 18 months since we were together. Just you and me, entwined under the trees, in rain or shine. Since we shared kisses that nobody looked at. Since we truly talked freely.
I miss you every day but I know I am not allowed to see you every day by your prison guard, and when I am allowed in for half an hour you are as strong and as gentle as I always have known you. It is as if you are free for a moment.
But when my time is up, you and your prison vanish, and I know I wont see you again because it’s already late in the day, and while everyone else spends time with you on the surface until late at night, I am condemned to long for you.
I started to build a life without you, as any woman during the war did, yet I know it is not what I wanted. And it is not what you wanted either.
You promise me sometimes that you come back. That we will see each other again before I fall into sleep.
I wait in vain because you are forced to forget about me. Because if you remembered me, and the happy moments we spent, you would hurt so deeply, your prison guard would put you into solitary confinement. For days then you would only wake up in the dark, sleeping through the day.
Sometimes you would find me quietly crying in my room, telling me how silly all this is, and that we both need to sort ourselves out. I nod without words, perhaps in agreement, or just to have a moment peace.
I have also fought many wars, but I have never seen someone being so cruelly treated as a prisoner of war by himself.
It is not a war I, or anyone, can fight with you because the battle scene doesn’t exist. The war in itself does not protrude through your skin. So underground and hidden, those who put their ear to the ground can only hear the rumblings and guess the utter horror underneath their own worlds.
Only at night, when I lie awake sleepless, I can feel the gaping wound within you. Then I cry, and remember the suffering you inflict upon your own being, for reasons I dare not speak aloud.
Exhausted my heart rushes to help you, to find the iron doors to your cell locked.