Digging out my mother’s letters to scan I came across a shell casing I had not seen in years. It is pretty big and stand quite happily on its own with a fountain pen in it. It is made of brass and has M Vn on its base. The V being five in Latin. On this Halloween just gone having it again after so long made me think of the many things people adorn their desks and houses with that are actually from the dead or cause death. From the obvious weapons to the not so obvious; real feathers, ivory trinkets, leathers of all kinds, paper in abundance even today.
It isn’t that we are ghoulish it is just that we don’t think of these things for what they actually are any longer. We have given skin so many names that we are divorced from the deaths that give it to us. A separation that it appears we need for though we are great killers we are not all born killers and we like to lie to to ourselves in order to bear what we do and keep hold of what we have bought.
I wonder in this case, if the shell casing was discharged in war. If it is a keepsake from some battle. If the large round from it, killed. It is strange to think of that much murder holding my pen.