"I fell in love with a fairytale."

Those were her words when I asked why our lives had become what they are now.

The first entrance to her flat, tapestries and flowers and shards of pottery assaulting me as soon as I set foot through the door. A six foot print of The Accolade embroidered like the Bayeux hanging in an alcove. The single rose I gave her placed in an empty wine bottle. She played Yo-Yo Ma on vinyl with something that looked like the first gramophone ever made. I always think of her now when I hear a cello, and whatever it is I'm doing at the time stops for the memory. I will always remember her curled up on that red loveseat like the empress she was to me. We first made love there, on old red satin or whatever it was. Corse to the touch, but beautiful. It was only after the first time that she would let me kiss her on the lips, like it was something allowed after passing a test. She never spoke of it, when or why she let me into her world, a world I had only ever been permitted to sojourn through before. The Kiss hung above her bed, and after she had fallen asleep the first night we lay there together I stared up at it with her in my arms thinking....thinking that I had been searching for this woman forever. I have not been the same man since that night. She became my faith.

You wouldn't know to see it now that we had bliss in this place for five years. Five years of being whole, of the absolute knowledge that we were exactly what we were supposed to be. There is nothing left of us here now. The door is gone. An explosion of some sort destroyed most of the living room. I believe her bedroom was used as a firing position for an anti-tank team at one point in the fighting. Shell casings are everywhere, all the glass is shattered and there are stains in abundance.

Where is she you ask?  

I didn't want to believe what I first heard, but after seeing her face again I knew it was true. Oh, you know her well I'm sure since you were able to find me. She is the reason the front has been extended. She is the reason there is bread now, even if it isn't quite palatable. She is the reason so many more have died than necessary. Over here, let me show you who she is. She's on this poster, the valiant People's Commandante leading us into a glorious future. You know who she is now, serve her excellently I have no doubt. But before you do whatever it is you were sent to do I want you to know that I saved The Kiss before our city burned. You will never find it. And even if she refuses it now, once upon a time she had a different name. Once, when she loved me, her name was Ivy.