Shell Shocked

I remember when you left me.
*
"Please," I whispered, my lips soft against your ear, "Don't go..."
At that point you pulled away, "But I have to. You know I have to, it's not my wish. It's the government's, I have to fight in this war."
"Run away, and come back to me," I said, pleading with you.
"I can't," was your reply, "They'll hate me if I do. There are rumours that the punishment for running away is – "
Quickly, I placed my finger on your lips, "Don't say the word."
"Then I won't."
We kissed. Together, awkward hand in awkward hand, we walked down to the train station. There, waving my old, threadbare scarf, I bid you farewell.
*
You didn't die in the trenches. At the time of your return I was relieved. So relieved. But now, as I gaze back through the years, I realise I was mistaken. It would've been kinder for you to have died out there, fighting. It would have been noble and right. You should've fallen in the mud, amongst the rotten and broken bodies.
However you still live now, seventy years later. If you can call it living.
*
I wake up to screaming. When the nightmares had first started I'd been startled, but now they are as familiar to me as salt and pepper.
"No!" you cry, sobbing into your pillows, "Make them stop! Stop the shooting!"
And there is nothing I can do but hug you and whisper reassurances into your ear. Yet you never want my help. You never even recognise that your comforter is me. Tonight is no different. Without love, without memories, you push me away.
You push me away and you scream.
*
Yes. You were never shot. You were never wounded. You never died out there, out there in the trenches. Not physically anyway. But your mind.... it fell during those long bitter years. It fell and it cracked into a thousand pieces.
Sometimes, no, all the time, I cry too. Because I know, deep down, it was my hands that dropped you. Me who shattered you. I shouldn't have ever let you go.
I should've kept you home, home with me. Safe.