Happy Places are Where Smiles can Make You Cry

I walk with a slow and grueling pace. The air is humid and the sky is simply minuscule splotches in the canopy of this dense jungle. I breathe in the hot air and can taste the salt of the nearby sea. I close my eyes and imagine that this is all but a dream.
For in these moments that seem so hopeless I can see through the haze of pain and discouraging thoughts. I escape into my own idea of peace. My own small release from the chaos that is filling this war ravaged jungle.

Everything is quiet. For this minute moment I can breathe in deeply. I can sigh without the fear of being heard. I can laugh and I can speak with a clear and unhindered tone. No more whispering. No more need to stay alert. I am free. It is bright. The light is shining through the windows of the still unfamiliar house. I am not alone. I am surrounded by smiles. Smiles untainted by the thoughts of war. Smiles uncontaminated by the nightmares of a tortured soul. They do not see the corpses that lay on the fields of a foreign land. These smiles do not see the bodies of men that have fallen at my hand.
These smiles only see me. They see the hero, the soldier, and the survivor. They see the surface of a man that lived through this terrible war. They do not see the dying soul of a war-battered man. These smiles see nothing but what they wish to. In this place the war is
a memory. Life is as it should be.

Such a paradise cannot last. This is the thought that runs through my head as I stumble to catch my balance. I look back to see my captor. I am a prisoner. I will die. I will be written down as a K.I.A. and lost to the memories of the soldiers I had once marched with. I will never see those smiles. I should hate this man. This foreign soldier that stalks my every step. Pushes me. Pokes me with the only thing that gives him any power to control me. In a way he is my grim reaper. But I see him as my savior. Through him I will finally escape this hell that is called war. I look into his eyes and see his fear.
He knows that I have accepted my fate.

It is time.