The Strange Picture That Won the War

by C. Martinez

And then about ten feet away are the girl’s parents, lying on their bellies, shot in the back before they could reach shelter. Pulled from her mother’s arms, the smiling child is covered in blood, and a lot of that has also stained Delacroix’s shirt. Yet, they’re both grinning and besot with each other. In the background, perhaps twenty feet away from them, there is a soldier contorted in the air, mouth gaping because a bullet has just hit him. There is the man next to him; it looks as if he’s been startled out of the fight to watch his fallen comrade die. There is the man on the other side who is on his belly and firing, perhaps he hasn’t noticed, perhaps he doesn’t care, and perhaps he just knows that he has to keep fighting.

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C. Martinez is a musician, painter and writer with an unhealthy fondness for excessive amounts of loose leaf tea. (As a result, she doesn't sleep much.)