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The days of the golden skies still ruled, the days of hope inside unmeasured. When feelings laughed and hearts were true and a young man named William went off to fight one war and two battles....

William was stationed in France during the war. He left home and all his loved ones to fight the good fight. To be a hero and a sad memory, all at once. He left to be a handsome soldier and win with honor. Not afraid of death or to fall for his country, like glory on the battle field he thought. All of his beautiful memories of dances and pretty girls and tears for him surrounding his grave.

William would be brave, but he would back it up with sincerity. He would show his heart (and what a heart!) that his intentions were always real and always good. Always.

He received the first letter exactly one month after the first night at camp. The outside was entirely blank except for the address. He opened it to find something unexpected.

Her name was Sara and she said she knew William.

“High school?” William wondered.

Sara said she had missed seeing him at lunch when he spilled his milk on a friend. She said she had laughed so hard. William did remember that. She said she missed watching him look out the window at study hall. “Like you were dreaming of angels,” is how she put it.

William remembered and recalled his thoughts, and while not angels, they were poet thoughts. William didn’t remember a Sara.

She said she loved writing and writing letters and if it was OK with him, she would gladly write him while he was away.

And Sara did. Three letters a week. And he would write back just as many.

Her letters were always a little longer then his. Sara was born in Havenport, Mass. She collected leaves. Her favorite color was blue and she could make roast five different ways. She loved poetry by Dylan Thomas, Percy Shelly, Keats and Poe.

William would tell Sara about his friends on base. He would tell her how he, too, liked poetry and missed the stars back home. How in the summer he went on long hikes in the hills with his brother.

Some nights Sara would leave dinner a little early and read a line William had wrote in one of his letters. Under her covers, with almost a sad kind of feeling, she read, “I would like to give everything I am and everything I hope for. I miss the battle lost, but not the hope.”

Sara would close her eyes and say that line over and over, “the battle lost, but not the hope.”
And in the morning, when the sun was out, Sara would say a prayer for William and go eat her breakfast.

William never cried. He laughed. These were his laughing years, each brighter than the last. Each person more meaningful then the next. But he never expected Sara. Not even in his poet thoughts. Maybe in dreams, but those hopes of a love too pure had died with a harsh word forgotten and a girl with no name.

Sara grew up watching William.

For a husky girl she was very good at blending in with people. Often not saying a word, and too often regretting it. She watched him in fifth-grade when he fought the older kids who always took his money. That was almost ten years before, the first day she had spoken to him. Her words had been kind for a fifth-grader.

“It’s OK,” Sara had said looking at the cut on his arm. “Everything will be OK.”

William hadn’t said a word. His eyes still wet from the beating the older boys had given him, he simply walked away. That night, William would remember the girl’s kindness and he would do his chores without complaining.

Sara watched William in the halls, marking the spots he would pass in her mind each day. Sara wrote poems for William and Sara remembered the first day she knew William was meant for her. He read a poem, a third-grade poem about a caterpillar. It was called, “The Caterpillar,” By William Kroft. That had made her smile.

“William knows who I am,” she thought to herself, and, “I think he is starting to like me.”

Months went by and the letters came and went out. William trusted Sara with secrets and also with her secret identity.

“Maybe she’s ugly,” he thought. Then his heart would yell at him.

What does it matter if her letters pass the time? But he did enjoy them. Something about her writing and the way she spoke to him. It was almost like she knew him.

Sara wrote secrets she had always wanted to tell William. She sent him some different leaves to look at and William would laugh when they fell out of the envelope, fluttering down like feathers.

Sara gave her heart to William in words. She was his baby, she told herself.

In one letter William asked politely for a picture and when Sara read this she was sad because she was overweight and couldn’t help it. She wasn’t the prom queen, but she loved William. She wrote him and got an even better answer then she had ever hoped for.

On long nights, William thought of Sara. On long days after months of hard work William had grown fond of Sara and her voice echoed in his mind. There was something so passionate about her thoughts.

William was in love.

“Would you still care for me if you see my picture?” she wrote.

“I will still love you,” William had replied. Sara was the most beautiful girl he’d never met.

William cried when he received the picture.

He cried because his heart was dark. He cried because she was not an angel and did not hold blue eyes as the sky. And William cried for what he would do to a sweet girl.

When the letter came, Sara kept it under her pillow until that evening. She took it out in her bed and read to herself by moonlight. She read about how things weren’t going to work out between them after all.

Sara lay down softly, almost tenderly, as if not to break, and cried. Sara cried all night and cried to the moon. She cried to the stars for holding false hopes and false wishes. Sara died that night in her heart.

Under the same stars, the two lay,
like fallen angels gone astray.
Hopes long lost,
torn up inside,
like wishes missed,
and spirits die.

And sometime in that night of tears, Sara remembered William’s words.
“I would like to give everything I am, and everything I hope for. I miss the battle lost, but not the hope.”

Sara said a prayer with William in mind.

William lay in a cold bunk and remembered a girl with no name from where his love had stopped. A long time ago, from a death she had vanished. William laid thinking of Sara and her story of watching him spill milk. Her leaves were still lying in a book close by. Each one a story. Each one special. He marveled at this and he loved Sara. And he hated himself.

Months went by and William’s few letters went unanswered. He had apologized with all of his heart. William begged for a forgiveness that was undeserved. He begged for an angel back that he’d killed. William begged until the day a mine took his body and his legs.

The days of the golden skies had died. William fought the good fight and lost. He was a hero to some and a sad memory to all. And in the hospital bed he lay. His face scarred and broken, yet his eyes of blue still shining. Like an angel, almost.

He had turned his back on a love that was true.

“Only once in a lifetime,” thought William. “I miss my Sara.”

Above the stars and below the moon.

A slender girl walked in. She was very beautiful and William hid his scarred face. William cried with the darkness in his eyes. He felt a soft touch and felt his hand being held.

William sighed.

“It’s OK,” Sara said. “Everything will be OK.”

She smiled and laid her head on his chest.

William’s eyes filled with tears.

“You are so beautiful, William,” Sara whispered.

And she looked into his eyes.

“I love you.”