The death of a Katipunero

Through ten thousand sunsets we can never share, in this reality, were you even real?

Sometimes it’s easier to lose myself in this senseless charade. Willingly asleep, I know not what I wait for in this seeming eternity.

The madness is my solace.

It is only that which stills my heart from it’s turmoil.

As I drift on, I drown myself constantly in inanities to forget.

It is cruel; all that I have ever held precious, are nothing but insignificant details lost to time. Time which cares not for our achievements, nor our merits; it carelessly discards all that we have fought for, no matter how much blood and how many tears were shed for whatever reasons and passions.

In another time, in another life, you were mine.
___

The gunpowder was suffocating that night as it masked the stench of blood from the fallen. We fought for our freedom, for our ideologies, to reaffirm our optimistic pursuits.

I felt the grass and wet earth crunch under my feet as my bolo bit into another one bringing him down. Amid the chaos the smell of the falling rain persisted, as though cleansing away the decay.

Their numbers were dwindling, the fight was dying down. Their expected retreat was certain. Only a few more in our steady line of strategic victories and the region was ours.

As I assessed the casualties in the surrounding area the biting cold seeped into my bones when I could find your outline nowhere in the dim of the night.

“Bartolomeo!”

I screamed your name amid the receding gunfire until my lungs were hoarse. It was then that I found you.

Cold hard droplets were starting to pound down and the rain had started to pour into an unforgiving torrent slowly extinguishing the scattered flames lighting the darkness.

I vaguely remember one, maybe more of our comrades shaking me to lucidity. The battle was moving north, but I could no longer hear them, I could no longer see anything but the haze as I felt my world crumble and break around me in the darkness.

It was something we had prepared for; but nothing could prepare me for the vacant expression in your eyes as you looked right through me. Where the warmth, acknowledgement, joy, and love would never be present again.

We fought for our future; for ourselves; for us. My future died with him that night.
____

Time does not heal any of my wounds. Time is a cruel creature that evokes suffering and continues to drag me on, a constant ticking reminder that I am here, while you are not. You are lost to an abyss that I might never cross over.