I needed to explain out my thoughts Before I could write out what I've meant to say from the start Here it is, stripped of meter and unobscured by metaphor
In 1914, when the Christmas lights burned brighter than the stars The carols echoed from the trenches We forgot about the war In "no man's land," he showed me a picture of you, his wife It was remarkable how much you looked like mine That night we talked in fragments and exchanged cigarettes I guess we never were friends, but we still exchanged addresses So that we could visit and write If we both made it out of that damned war alive But down the chain of command Fraternization, over night, became an act of treason I didn't think much of it until I saw him emerge with a white flag As he smiled and walked closer, I screamed "Go back!" My commanding officer must have heard me Because he turned his gun on me and said "You're the one who will shoot If you don't there won't be one widow, there will be two" At first, I shot off to the right, hoping that he might get scared But he kept coming closer waving a letter I said a prayer And wished that everything leading up to this moment had never transpired And then I pulled the trigger The pain never seems to fade On a reconnaissance mission, a week later I managed to snag the letter Which warned us of an air raid and offered us refuge in their trench
I'm not writing to ask for forgiveness from you Because after all this time I still can't to forgive myself And since the day that I killed him every second has been a hell Where the pain never seems to fade Never seems to fade Another world must be possible Another world must be possible