Unexpectedly, two friends announce they are getting divorced.

Months pass, and time grinds out ugly facts like chewed up meat. New things become hard to believe, but not the divorce itself.

Our generation, our friends are not immune to the ugly ways of the wider world. Emotional death, between our two friends.

The heart has stopped beating. Crack the corpse open, and see: What was alive is dead. Blood, sinew, muscle, flesh turn to dust. And fire, extinguished, has begun its inexorable shift to stone.

Last night I woke up, crying, from a dream. I couldn’t stop for five, ten minutes. I sat up in bed and just leaked. My girlfriend didn’t wake up.

My grandparents were alive, but dying. I was losing them all over again. Thinking about it is making me cry right now. In retrospect, I realize they were rolling their eyes at me; they knew how silly things were, me crying in this dream, but they let me cry for my comfort.

I miss them. I feel like this is too obvious to say. Like I have a big, gaping, bleeding wound in my chest, and I’m pointing at it, saying “this hurts.” It’s redundant.

I decided to try and cheer up: every email and instant message I sent out this morning rhymed. It worked. For an hour. After three messages, one of my closest friends blocked me. Early in the afternoon, my girlfriend concurred in this judgment, and told me absolutely to not reply with a poem.

Whimsy engenders menace. Sweetness turns sour. I’ve stopped sending messages, today, but I haven’t stopped rhyming. Every minute I sit here is another line. I can’t help it. My heart rhymes with sorrow.

It’s a little over 4 months since my cousin, Rudy, was killed in Iraq. A little more than a third of a year.

His convoy was hit by a remotely detonated IED; Rudy took the brunt of the explosion.

Today the Senate voted to withdraw our troops from that country. The House did so last week. It is the culmination of the Democratic Party’s campaign position; the crown of their first hundred days.

People have asked me if I blame President Bush for my cousin’s death. I tell them no, and they ask me why not.

Partially it’s because SFC Rudy Salcido was a volunteer. He wanted to serve; he wanted to give to his country and his family. And, with his characteristic bravado, he was looking for a little action. He found it. He gave everything he had to us.

But mainly I can’t blame the president because the Enemy, the ones who killed him, were also volunteers. Willing participants. My cousin was killed the day after the November elections. The insurgents who murdered him saw the results; saw the Democrats won; saw that we would be pulling out of Iraq. They saw these things, and went to bed, and had a good night’s sleep, and got up in the morning and decided to kill him anyway.

What’s going on, there, in Iraq, has nothing to do with our political process. The people there who terrorize, murder, and destroy aren’t doing it in the name of our president. It may be that when we withdraw, peace will come to Iraq. But let us not be deluded. When we withdraw, retail slaughter will turn to wholesale. Peace will come, eventually; the peace of the grave.