Love in the Remains: Distracted by this Casual Romance

…and all I can think of is how her emerald green eyes gaze into mine, a reflection of that same far away love.

…when myriad colors bleed into the cold desert sky as plumes of green, blue, and white smoke form an incomplete aromatic rainbow as the sounds of firing ammunition and artillery crack against the mountain walls, spiraling back in ricocheted echo. I’ve taken cover behind a burnt out car and am laying down a staccato suppressive fire while yelling at my partner to move, move, move. He can’t hear me (due to the chaos found in the first sentence) and certainly can’t see me (again, first sentence) so I duck down, pressing my back against the crumpled passenger door of the car, trying my best to avoid the small constellations of shattered glass sprinkled on the sand when...

A howling sheet of wind brings a wall of twisting sand sweeping across the battlefield, and temporarily I cannot see anything and lower my head, frantically unbuckle my forty pound bulletproof vest and stick my mouth into the chest area sucking in the only bit of clean air. My eyes begin to water fiercely and I spit out a grainy substance that has accumulated in my mouth, which looks dark and foreign, like something that should not have been in my body...

I turn back to the north and haphazardly empty what’s left of my magazine, not really sure where the bullets stream to, unclip a new one, slam it against my Kevlar helmet for alignment, swing it down and into the hollow chamber of my M-16, jam it in tightly, pull back the firing chamber and let it crunch shut, set the selector to semi-automatic, and return my blue eyed gaze to the western horizon, where a jagged mountains slice upwards in deep silhouette, a cold and indifferent sun, the color of far away love, glimmers above...