Trigger

Strange to say, it is only now beginning to dawn I am no longer in the war zone. It is as if I am still waking from some kind of dream, a dream of fitful whirlpool sweats, one in which the mountains are impossibly high, the people uncannily wise yet poor, and the prospects as bleak as a winter's day, which some small part of me, some ridiculous principality within, still believes could end in sunlight. My sister's funeral is at the end of the week. There, is a kind of moonlight, not sunlight. I will be going with the artist. We will wear black mostly, but the artist has said she also wants to wear the blue shawl I bought her. This I purchased with a close protection team from a thirteen year old boy who has known only war. Wear it well, his brave smile seemed to say as I looked back one last time. The snows on the peaks were melting fast. The passes were clearing. Was that cordite I could smell in the distance? Or a twist of hope? I like to think my late sister would have known. Interesting, too, how we grant the dead wisdom.