Page 55 of The Unknown Birds

“Have you? Comedy, tragedy, or problem play? Come now, don’t hold back.”

“It’s nothing,” she demurred, instantly bashful. “Forget it.”

“Ash, it’s only me,” he said, and those four words might well have been her undoing.

She reached under her pillow and took out the postcard, which she’d slipped inside The Life of the Fields. “It’s a poem…” she admitted, then shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Poem-like.”

“May I read it?” he pleaded.

It felt conceited to share her work, but there would probably never be a moment in all her life where Private Charley Ashley could refuse Lance Corporal Alex Rook when his eyes looked soft and hungry, so she handed it over, holding her breath and watching as he read.

We crouch inside a thunderous wall of sound

and cling unto our minds as though a thread

unravels. Gurgling sanguine groans abound⁠—

we choke on hell’s own water as if fed.

We dine on hopes and lies, but never bread,

and sing unuttered songs of untold fears⁠—

of lying left in craters where we bled,

unmasked at last and weeping bitter tears.

We youth, unyoung, now sigh for unspent years

and dreams of running, fresh, across a ground

untraveled. ’Stead we dodge through fiery spears

in search of home which never can be found.

Unquiet silence wracks our souls with dread.

Grief for the living, envy for the dead.

A thousand emotions seemed to cross Rook’s face as he was reading. “You’ve a way with words,” he finally rasped.

“Do you think so?”

He nodded. “The Bard himself would be proud.”

Ashley’s cheeks burned at the compliment.

He smiled at her, a little shy, and she smiled back, eager to give him a part of herself, so he could know her soul if not her truth.

“Keep it, if you like. As a thank you for the socks.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Please? I want you to.”

So he folded it in half and placed it in his own breast pocket.

“Fly back to us soon, Little Bird.”