Rose Rose I loved you. You with the slanted eyes, the slightly yellow tinted skin, the shining black hair smelling of jasmine, you and the beauty of your smile will live on forever in the recesses of my heart.

After many years as lovers our time together came to its inevitable end. We spend our last night together holding hands, talking and saying long good-byes.

With the rising sun came the time to leave her. I turn to look back, a final wave, her image blurred by my free flowing tears. A few steps later she calls out my name. I turn she is running to me. She hands me a pair of shoes I had left. She is smiling her smile and she is crying her tears.

The parting continues as I walk on down the street, the street I had walked a thousand times before. I walk down past the honey buckets containing the human waste destined for the farmer's fields. The maggots crawling forth from the honey buckets crunch under my feet. The stench is heavy but not as heavy as is the pain in my heart.

I was twenty one years old that month of June fifty years ago.

Another side of my Korean war. I guess.

From 'Voyages of the Vicky Mary.'

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