a letter home

He'd just gotten one word written before crumpling the paper and pulling a fresh sheet out to start over. "dear" just "dear" and it was all wrong. He could never start that way, not to her. Women could be so frustrating sometimes. Growling a small curse to all woman kind he wondered how this letter would go over. He was sure the same letter at different times could bring comepletely different responses. That was the real problem with being so far away, you could never choose when the recipient read it, and you are at the mercy of whatever mood they may be in.
Sighing he realized there was just no way to write a letter to this silly but wonderful woman. On the verge of giving up he slumped back into his deep chair, staring off into his ceiling, shaking his head in frustration. It'd been so easy when they were near eachother. All it took was a glance and he'd know exactly how she was doing and she would him. If'd they'd both been deaf or mute it'd not have made a lick of difference when they were together. Just being near her made everything make sense. It was as if they were two people who had never met, but everywhere they went, the other was there with the same idea in their heads, and it just made sense to be together. It just made sense.
Heaving and even more disgruntled sigh he bodily shifted in his chair trying to wrestle comfort from the chair to sooth his growing tension. It'd all made so much sense, until he'd left. Now nothing made sense, and he couldn't figure out what to do about it. She'd wanted him to go, because going affored great oppertunities for him, but he'd wanted to stay, with her. Things made sense when he was with her, and that was more than he'd ever had. So they'd done what was right by others... He'd left. Everything fell apart.
He thought she blamed him for not staying even when she'd said to go. She'd had a rough life, and no one she could rely on, and maybe she couldn't beleive he'd stay with her, and so she had to throw him off. Leave before being left. Things hurt less that way. She seemed to go back and fourth, and he never knew when being kind would make her angry, but he tried. He really did. He wanted to let her know that he did care, even if they never saw eachother again, but he didn't know how, didn't want to make her angry.
Things used to make sense he thought. Putting the pen down, he stood pushing up with both hands on the desk, grunting as if it were an effort. "Maybe tomarrow my love, maybe tomarrow" he muttered and suffled away from the desk.

He sighed heavily, feeling the weight already on his shoulders. He stared packing everything back into his back packe. The same things. The same backpack. He'd done it a hundred times, maybe a thousand, maybe once. It didn't really matter, it was the same backpack and the same things everytime, just one memory for every time.
He was a good soldier, serving tour after tour, going where ever he was ordered, killing whoever he was supposed to and staying alive. They ordered him to stay alive. They said "Your country needs you, it needs you alive to keep fighting, so come home alive." Home, that was sometime before he'd been issued pack.
The places he'd served changed, but never what he carried. Tools to live, tools to kill, tools to remember what home was. Those used to remind him what all the fighting was for, but that couldn't have been where he belonged, not him. Now they had their place all packed up safe, under the forest green camo pauncho, so that whenever it was all over, they'd still be there through it all and maybe the war would make sense again. When it was over.
There was one picture he looked at sometimes, of a family and a house with grass, a white picket fence, a tree with leaves and a tire swing under it, and people smiling. A boy, who looked like he must have, was there, with a proud man with a beard stood to one side, a stout smiling woman clinging to him, and two pretty little girls in sun dresses caught giggling. They all looked so happy. He new intelectually that is was his family, but he couldn't remember it quite right. Like dead eyes of a friend, the body and everything was the same, but the eyes were empty, the feelings gone.