Under the Blood Moon

Hey, it's the day of the Blood Moon...one of horror... for those with lingering feelings.

Or a soldier with lingering feelings for battles that once were.

But let's remind him--we're never too damned old to think of something new.

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"I'm too young to feel this damned old."

Alone, in a rundown backyard that hadn't been tended in years. The sky was--a thing of beauty. Blood seemed to trickle from the weeping willow of a moon--echoes of the heart. A cold breeze graced the neck--wonder if it remembered. The sky was too alive--that Garth song wanted it tamed.

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Sounds of what seemed like gunfire--or a military drill at a nearby airbase. Then, bright, vibrant sparks consumed the skyscape.

Flashes in the sky, or just tricks of the mind, triggered by a moon in blood red?

The mind certainly whirred—a comrade-in-arms, cut down by tracer fire. The night burned, along with the flames in the sky.

The echo of boots on wet metal was all too audible. A single red streak across an endless black canvas. The piercing whistle of the cold wind, meeting its fire. Back on the ridge, twenty-three, hollow...and that Garth Brooks song.

Dragging a fractured mind forward to an unwanted time.

Echoing.

"I'm too young to feel this damned old."

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But old it was. The body had started creaking a few months back. A haunted mind --pitch black, against the flaming orange sparks of gunfire that once were.

That once were.

The orange sparks danced. The heart still aches--too painful.

That could never be again. But these creaking legs still carry an old man wanting his guns.

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Yes. Too young to feel this damned old.

The moon above was bleeding--too much--and the same blood trickled from my ribs. Bullets lodged during two tours of Korea and one of Vietnam.

Ones missed--too strangely.

The orange sparks blended with the stars, becoming a flickering Van Gogh canvas--a poignant reminder of the comrades left behind.

The sky didn't care. The song still played---faint. Too true.

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Two tours of Korea. One of Vietnam.

Still here.

Still counting the countless stars years younger than the frame.

A frame still younger than the dead.

The moon in the sky still bleeds..and Garth Brooks still haunts.

Too young to feel this damned old.

Original Story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin

For L.C. Schafer's Dollar Challenge: