I Love You Still

by Britta Reque-Dragicevic

This first appeared in Britta’s blog, “Life After War” on October 30, 2018, and is republished with the author’s permission.

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The words do not pour forth; they catch in my breasts, clutch at my throat, refuse to be told.

I can’t write of finding your body, your warm blood melting the cold snow, the fixed gaze of your eyes forever staring into the darkness. That same darkness I was not able to save you from.

I can’t write of how my being tore in two, right down the crevices where you had dwelled, how I raged and cursed and swore against you for leaving me here.

For bringing your body home, but not your soul.
For being unreachable.
For our love not being enough….
For you.

How could love not be enough?

You needed me to understand. You needed me to sense without words that they had killed everything except your body.

You needed me to open wide my heart, my wet body, my expansive being that encompassed the cosmos and take you in. To understand. To hold what you could no longer hold.

To hold and hold and hold you.
Here.

You needed me to love you after you left me.
And I didn’t understand.

How many times had I brought you back to life?
How many times had you found refuge in me?
When the war got too thick.
The killings too easy.
The blood too lush and beautiful?
The horror too unwashable.

How many times had you come home…to me?
And then, one day it was over and you came home.
Not the man I’d loved.
The man I love.

And you were gone.
Too many months of unseen torture.
Too many months of unspeakable horror
In the irons and claws of the enemy.
There were no words left in you.
Only an empty stare that I startled you out of time and again
By the gentle brush of my hot skin.

I had already lost you, but losing you was not acceptable.
You had already lost you.

This happened a lifetime ago. In another war. Another era.
And yet, you sought me out now, needing me still
To pull you into my embrace and whisper in the dark
I love you still.

I love you still.

Now, I understand. For I remember.
What it is to die and die again.
What it is to need compassion across the realms
To need the deepest love one could ever need
When you’re on the other side.

It doesn’t matter that this is now and that was then.
I am Me.
And you are You.
I understand now.

Love tied us together, irrevocably.
You were never lost
I was never left
Our story is not done.

I love you still.

You did not fail me.

I love You

still.

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Lance Cpl. David Checrallah hugs and kisses his wife Christina in front of the Marine Attack Squadron 513 hangar at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz., April 13, 2010. Approximately 100 VMA-513 Marines deployed with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit for a seven-month deployment touring the Middle East and Horn of Africa. While on deployment the squadron participated in eight exercises with other nations providing close-air support and escorting helicopters for a majority of the exercises. Source.