She had opened her mind to the words the way an eye used to darkness, veiled with its lashes, opens cautiously to the light, and, finding it even a little blinding, closes itself too late. The light had come, and come invincibly, even after the eye had renounced it. It was too late to unsee.

Clutching the shredded tatters of my pride and dignity, I trudged to the office hours of my math instructor every week, seeking an explanation for the increasingly mysterious problems in the textbook. My instructor welcomed my presence as she would welcome the Angel of Death. Irritated? She was terrified. Explain… the problems? Articulate… the steps? Relate… the concepts? I would ask questions, and she would respond by completing yet another sample problem as fast as she possibly could, blushing nervously. I felt like I was on a Star Trek episode. “Captain, I think I understand… the creature communicates through multivariable calculus problems!”

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

His eyes…

So dull, so desperate, so lonely. They looked like the life had been scratched out - ripped off. And he looked tired; so very tired. I looked closer and I thought I caught a glimpse of hope, or love, or happiness; but at once it was gone, swallowed in his sea of sorrow. I knew they had loved once, they had lived once, they had felt once. What could do this? What could drain all the tears from such young eyes? What could makes scars incapable of healing? What memories lay imbedded behind those clouded orbs?

His cracked lips were silent but he said more to me than anyone had ever done. His eyes spoke for the both of us - he had survived the war; he had died during it.