Three Shorts

1. Soldier
My hands are too clumsy weak, too slippery with blood to really grasp anything properly... but I want to hold it anyways. I fumble against my coat pocket; I've had this coat for years, but suddenly this old friend is a new enemy as the fabric sticks to my fingers, folds under my grasp, refuses to yield. It takes most of the energy I have left to finally clench it weakly between a trembling thumb and pointer, and the rest to withdraw it, hold it in the fading field of my vision. Things are getting dim, but her smile on that faded, wrinkled film is brighter than the sun creeping over the horizon to my back.
"All for you, babe," I mutter to a memory. "It was always all for you."

2. Cattle
It did not take long to find the herd; they bellowed and belched and reeked blatantly, the quiet, cautious decency of a prey animal long forgotten. Hunkered in fat, dull masses like their human masters, the cattle wrapped their strong tongues around the grass, dragging it up by its roots and chewing idly. Their hooves cut into the frozen soil as they slowly paced to and fro to strip more plant life from the earth. All around, the prairie was marred by their gluttonous destruction.

3. Nevermind
I still remember how you invited me back to your house, paused, and then said "Nevermind." I thought little of it at the time; you were busy with academia as always. Now I think perhaps you knew that it was going to be the last time you ever saw me, and wanted to keep it as simple and perfect as the day had been. But part of me still wishes I’d known, too.