The Button

I don’t remember the first body. I remember the first time I stopped noticing them. That’s what stayed with me. Not shock — the absence of it.

We were moving through a field that used to matter to someone, the way all fields once did — a place where grass had a name, not just a color you crawl through. A boy walked ahead of me, young enough that he still nodded when spoken to, like he hadn’t yet learned the world didn’t owe him anything. He kept touching his pocket every few minutes — not nervously, more like habit. The way someone checks a wallet, or a ring. The way you confirm that part of you still exists.

A shell hit close enough to lift us but not close enough to choose us. In war, luck and doom sound the same when they arrive. When the air settled, and the dirt stopped falling, and the ringing in my head became a steady animal breathing inside my skull, I saw him lying there. Face turned like he heard something behind him, something interesting, something worth the effort.

His hand was still in his pocket. As if the blast hadn’t bothered to move that part.

I pulled it out. A button. Just a plain button — cracked a little, thread still clinging to the back. It must have meant something to him. A shirt from home. A jacket that fit once. A moment he didn’t want to lose. War takes the big things fast and the small things slow. The small things hurt more.

I still think about him. I don’t think about the others the same way. I don’t remember their pockets, or their habits, or the things they touched when the world became louder than thought. But I think about that button. How he held on to proof that he existed, right up until the moment he didn’t.

People ask what the war gave me. Nothing. War doesn’t give. It leaves things. And sometimes what it leaves fits in the palm of your hand.

By: Lenny Meeks