Service

A little piece of longing and sadness. Enjoy.

The river was cool on their ankles, a welcome reprieve from the sticky night air. He wondered what he was going to say to her to make it hurt less. He was leaving and she was going to fight him on it. It would break his heart to go, but he had to. His whole family was Navy. He wouldn’t ask her to wait for his service to be over, it would never be over.

The conversation with the Admiral didn’t go well. He tried to make him look at him like his son, but all he saw was an able-bodied man who should serve his country. You didn’t talk to the Admiral. You listened and obeyed.

He thought of running away with her to Beijing. She had a scholarship to study there, but he couldn’t leave his family anymore than he could leave her. Besides she was real smart. Smarter than him. She was going to cure cancer or find a way to stop global warming, and he was going to try and keep her safe from a distance, protect her by serving. It was the only way he could bear to break her heart too.

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Photo by tommypjr via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons