Radio

He stares out the window, listening to the radio; an old swing tune, one he used to dance to with the one he loved, Lenoria, one long past; nostalgia written on his tired and withered face as he taps his foot to the beat. Memories of those he loved and hated, far beyond this time and place. As the old swing tune comes to an end, he shakes and he shivers from the memories, as the nurses try to force him back to bed. The nurses give up as he jerks away for the light is on in his memories today. An old jazz tune starts up, the saxophone, with a joyful tune, his heart skipping in time and jumping with the beat.

He smiles as he remembers his mother, with her liquid brown eyes so bright and hair of mahogany, and how she would sign songs of adventure and courage as she tucked him in at night. Mother, the protector of all that was good and wholesome. She kissed the booboos and fought the closet monsters for years but still the cough came and took her away.

His brothers, whom he missed so dearly, torn from his arms as the air around him filled with screams of horror and pain. The bombs sounded so distant when confronted with a brother, whose life-force ebbed ever so quickly from his veins.

The screams that haunted his nights and dulled his days. These are the hated. Noise, so much noise. He’d beg for silence and be grateful for the noise.

He remembers the one who kept the nightmares at bay. Lenoria, heart of a lioness and twice as fair. His love, who nursed him back from the brink. She rocked him to sleep when the nightmares came for him. So long ago, it seemed. Lenoria, beloved, who bore his children and dealt with the pain, for her love for him was stronger than the horror he had had to face.

All dead, all gone. All the fighting from the war, the screams of agony that filled his head with dread as he lay in a lumpy bed,, all alone, with no one to talk to who understands at the end of the day.

As he shifts in his chair, the jazz tune come to an end, his heart slowing with the last note. He stares out the window as the crisp golden light floods down upon him. Bah! What a waste, the utter stupidity, to waste away in such a place. Still, he realizes no one can take his memories away. These memories may cause him smiles of joy and tears of pain, but they are his and no one else’s. The doctors and nurses can’t tell him how to feel or what to say. They can all go to hell because he is going to stare out the window and smile anyway. He leans forward and turns up the radio as the music starts again, in his memories today.