Day 5 of this week’s prompts is a picture prompt.
Old photograph: pic prompt
You have a look of my son, so I guess that means we are related, somehow, somewhere along the genealogical tree.
The long, straight nose. The wide mouth. The oval face with a strong jaw. Not the eyes though. His eyes are bright, wondering at the world still – he is only eight, after all. Your eyes cry anguish, of stuff witnessed which plays again and again, a technicolour film in the days before colour.
Your mouth too, tight closed as if opening your lips would release a gasp, a shout, a scream.
What’s behind those tormented eyes, that tight mouth? The photo is of an age which suggests the Great War. Was that it? Did you sleep fitfully in mud and filth, alongside rats, and worse. Did you see comrades die in more horrible ways than the world had ever imagined?
You survived, but survival was not a blessing.
I glance at my son, with his family resemblance. A shiver runs through me – my own terror at this uncertain future.
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Why such an uncertain future if the photo is reminiscent of the Great War of the past?
Don’t you read the news? The chances of a kid these days being involved in another war is not exactly nil…