[ENTRY A4: THE BURIAL DETAIL]
Date: Two Weeks After the Fall
They put me on burial detail today.
Mass graves. Dug by hand. Row after row after row. We're supposed to identify the bodies before burying them, but there are too many. Thousands. Tens of thousands. We can't even count.
The smell is indescribable. Rot and smoke and something sweet underneath. It gets in your clothes. Your hair. Your skin. You wash and wash and you still smell it.
We work in shifts. Four hours on, four hours off. Some soldiers can't handle it—vomit, pass out, have to be carried away. Nobody judges them.
I found a child's shoe today. Little red shoe, muddy, still tied. I put it in my pocket. Don't know why.
Tonight I dreamed of shoes. Thousands of them. All sizes. All colors. Walking by themselves toward the wall.