Breaking a Dead Heart

The soldiers’ heart didn’t beat. 
 
In fact, he hadn’t felt the familiar thrum of warm blood pumping through his body for decades. Nor the crisp feel of fresh air filling his lungs. 
 
His heart was a crypt filled with cobwebs; there was no need for it now. 
 
But where the soldier stood overlooking the rolling hills of the countryside, as he had since he could remember, and watched as a flock of sheep trundled along, followed by the sheepdog that barked in the distance. 
 
His heart didn’t beat, but his chest filled with an unfamiliar sense of longing. A desperate feeling to leave everything behind and run, run into the distance and past the sheep, over the hills and to somewhere new. 
 
As impossible as it was, he wanted nothing more than to feel the expansion of his lungs after every inhale, wanted to once again hear the pumping of blood in his ears again. He wanted to remember what it felt like to be alive. 
 
But the sky was bleak and cloudy, yet the few rays of sunlight weasled through the gaps and caught on the branches of the old willow tree. It must have been the only thing standing that was older than him now, apart from the manor house that stood stubbornly behind him. 
 
The house stood tall and in solidarity with the life around it, with the ivy climbing up the walls and the moss covering the bricks. He envied the way it was able to adapt. It held out it’s hand to nature and allowed the natural process of evolution to happen. But he stood, in the same place on the border of the land and watched the turning of the sky. 
It should have given him some sense of comfort, knowing he was somehow not entire lost here, but once again, he felt alone.
 
That should have changed when the new couple moved in. A nice couple. And despite his immediate disliking of them, had grown to admire the pair. He couldn’t bring himself to envy them, with the way in which they loved each other so clearly. Freely. 
 
Even the solider, ever the spectator, could see they were made for each other. Despite his lack of a romantic history, their love was evident – with the bright smiles as soon as they saw the other, the gentle touches on the small of their back whilst passing in the corridor, or retreating to the basement in the middle of the night to check the squeaking boiler. 
 
The couple was perfect, as perfect as a couple could be, and the solider couldn’t help but love them to bits. 
 
It made the solider look back into his past, trying to remember a time where he had someone like that for him. He tried. 
 
The solider had since given up on death, much as he had done in life. There’s not much he could do when he was stuck in the same place for decades, overlooking the same hills and same sunrise. He often found himself wondering in his mind, coming to the same memories. 
 
Some days, he could no longer bare it. 
 
But on others, he allowed himself to indulge in fantasies, reliving the past and making it his present. He allowed himself to dream. 
 
So the solider stood there, back straight and shoulders pushed back, eyes on the orange sun that was disappearing under the horizon, and felt his non-beating heart break. 
 
(I miss you, Sir)
 
He thought of everything he would do if he ever got a second chance.