Short Story Toast The Knowing Remembers Everything

In the poem “Song of Napalm,” it is a straight narrative of what it is like to live with memories from such a horrible war. “Song of Napalm” follows a Viet Nam soldiers' memories of a scene he once saw. His mind tries to distort the image of a girl getting bombed and burning in front of his eyes into a pleasant scene. The effort to make the scene pleasurable is the mind's way of trying to protect itself from the horrific incident that actually happened.

“I’ll never hit you in the face where it will leave a mark...” The words rushed in, taunting. The cold emptiness in the tone, like he was there in the room, whispering in her ear. And all at once, the fear was back. The raw fear that gripped her body like a vice and left her gulping in air. In a panic, she whirled her head around the room. She was alone. Relief flooded her, but the sickening butterflies remained. She gripped the counter until her knuckles turned white; outlining the jagged scar more prominently, and she fought to steady her breathing, blink back the tears, focus on something else.

“Bloody hell woman! It’s me, James!” he shouts, jumping away from you. You grab a

When Jarrell says the words, "hunched in the belly," the reader gets a very uncomfortable feeling. In line number three the reader gets visual imagery as well as slight tactile imagery. The visual imagery comes when Jarrell says, "Six miles from earth." The reader gets a clear image of something being very high above the ground. When the author says, "loosed from the dream of life," the reader gets a slight feeling of death or a vision of someone dying. The fourth line, "I woke to the black flak and the nightmare fighters," brings the reader visual, auditory and tactile imagery. The reader can picture someone waking up to shrapnel, from an exploding bomb, flying by their head. One can hear the gunfire of the, "nightmare fighters," along with the exploding shells. The reader also gets a tactile image when the author says, "I woke up," because everyone knows what it is like to wake up from a sleep. In the fifth and final line the reader gets a very graphic visual image. The reader can picture someone's body being so destroyed that instead of removing the body from the turret the soldiers must wash it out with a hose.

He forces his lips away from her skin to look at her sadly, "I would try to apparate you out, but Bellatrix made sure to jinx you so that you'd be bound to the Manor."

She feels Armin’s hand on her arm, tentative, and notices that the soldiers have disappeared. Just as she’s about to ask him, Armin beats her to it. “I told them to go up, said that it’d attract less attention.”

“I’m saying I’m sorry that I can’t be what you need.” Her mouth opens to reply. I cover her mouth with a finger, forbidding her to interrupt. “I don’t think I have it in me. I’m not built that way,” I tell her.

"I'll get you out of here," he shouts over the storm. He rises, nearly toppling with the winds, and offers me his hand.

He could still remember it vividly. The loud, quick footsteps, the swing of the baseball bat, the flash of red. The crumpled body of his ten-year partner, the blood pooling from her head like a hose. Her broken form laying in his arms. The wailing of sirens, the endless questions of the police. He could still remember it like it was yesterday.

"I see what's going on. You can hold her," Amanda laughs, passing Jesse to Rafael, where he picks up Jesse rather clumsily.

He pulls her toward himself, tucking her to his chest and folding himself over her, becoming her shield. The kid plasters herself to him, her breaths coming out quick and panicky.

Instead, it brings forth sounds of gunshots and memories of the war: ‘Thud, thud, thud, - quite soft… they never cease – / Those whispering guns’ (36/37). The onomatopoeia and personification of the guns emphasise the insidiousness with which these memories pervade his life, how they linger in the background but then come barraging to the forefront. Finally, he cries ‘I’m going crazy. / I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns’ (38/39). Here, the harsh sibilance finishes the poem in an abrupt tone, illuminating the depth of psychological pain that the speaker is plunged

“I just need to regain enough strength to cast a portal spell, and then I can leave.” I finish up.

I remember holding her hands as a child, how delicate and soft they seemed and yet that never made them seem any less worn or sturdy. Her hands told stories of different times, of different worlds and hardships. She had grown up worlds away from me, in a different land, at a different time, in an era and a life that I would never know.

I try to shake my head, but that’s worse. “I- I don’t know.” He reaches for my hand and helps me up. My body aches from laying on the cement for so long, and my knees are weak. He drapes one of his long, slender arms around me, to hold me up.