Dirt + Blood.

There are paintings on every page of my History textbook. Last night I had one by Camille Pissarro. I cried. Not because of the painting. Maybe a little. But mostly I cried because I just got into the chapter on World War I.
I always cry over wars.
Something in my chest presses really hard and I think I'm going to choke when I read about wars.
"The Book Thief" did it to me. Rudy Steiner laying in the street did it to me. Liesel Meminger sitting next to the sleeping Jew did it to me. Max Vandenburg standing and kissing her palm did it to me. That book, that stupid book that's not even true, it's not even real, that book did it to me.
Few things always make me cry.
Wars are one of them.

Sometimes I think I'm a pitiful woman because my History textbook makes me cry, but then so does Isaiah, and there's nothing pitiful about that. All too often I judge my emotions more harshly than I should. It's words. Words have a sway unlike anything else over me. They unmoor me. Someone could probably write a book about dirt, and it would make me cry. That is the depth of how I read. And there's nothing wrong with that. To each their own. We all have that one thing that just kills us inside. We're all different.

My French teacher said something about that the other day. We made illustrations for our Emile Zola story we read, and I painted mine and she stood up there holding it and said, we all have our gifts. We are all different. 
I think I forget that more than I should.
We are all different.

And so, a confession.
Wars make me weep. I have to watch Saving Private Ryan by myself because I cry so hard that I start making sounds and I can't help it. "The Book Thief" kills me. I can't even read quotes or excerpts from it without tears pressing on the corner of my wrinkled eyes. My History textbook makes me cry. It just does. Even though it's written in a dry voice and almost all facts and they only throw in one stanza of a poem, it just does. Just thinking about Matthew Crawley makes me cry. Birdsong makes me cry. Black Hawk Down makes me cry. Pictures of the holocaust make me cry. Pictures of marines make me cry. Pictures of soldiers make me cry.
Everything about war makes me cry.

And I don't know why.

Blood stained earth. That one gets me every time.