Sleepy Fox Hollow Hang up my heart, let it air out

he fought the new tension in his jawline and turned away, focused for a time upon their trajectory. "vhatever you vish to do, you have my support, takiyok," the general intoned, more stiffly than he had wanted, more formally than was necessary between them. i love you, he might have said, and ended the silent war between them in its entirety.
but it was not only i love you, it was i love you, and i love another, and another still. i do not know what to do, for i did not believe i had the capacity for such. and because of love, i will not choose, and because i will not choose, you all will suffer. the words were struck upon his tongue, twisted; mahler could not untangle them, and perhaps he also did not wish to say such unfair and convoluted things to the winterwhite.
and so he was quiet, looking to the plume of ash far beyond them, thinking of the mountains behind, considering the buried graves of those diasporans who had fallen in the past months, and left them all unsure, all bereft.