Twenty three years he spent
with sand in his mouth,
connecting in ditches, connected to bodies
trying to separate them from their humanity.
Almost dangerously close to the way
the enemy did.
He could only get close in pieces.
He had to separate, in order to live.
It was up to him, or them.
He couldn’t survive any more connections.
Each connection was a loss.
Hit.
Torn away
Limb from limb
So he tried to shut his mouth.
His heart.
Take the hit, in a silent way,
for the brother he could only love
On another day.
Twenty-three years away.
I’ll see you again someday
He'd think, as he looked at his feat.
The war defeated him in many ways.
Imagining his comrade as a child
AT the kite festival he grew up
going to as a kid
Slivers of glass on his skin
Wounded in an innocent way,
Expert gauger of the wind
Like him.
They could be brothers then.
Only then.
Back home.
That was the highest he’s ever felt,
And yet he was the master of it,
Not the part that could fly.
Ironic.
It was the first time he realized something in him
Could be religious.
He might.
Ride the wind or clouds
Take to the light and heaven.
Someday.
But now it was about silo missile doors
And unstable floors
Heat and pain.
In a place that was always in desperate need of rain.
He’d find himself behind
Mounds of destruction that would
now serve to protect him.
Praying.
Head down.
Religion or fright.
Maybe just a kite.
Whatever kept him alive.
For a stranger.
Twenty-three years later.
Home. It felt solid.
This time for good.
He came home and everything had changed.
It was too much like that place, he was trying to leave.
A sense of heat and hate, a burning that lingered in the air.
He felt everywhere.
Even in the field, down by the river
Where the kites would frighten the clouds,
Lighting up the cityscape in the dimmed down
Background.
These days, he could fly anything there,
It was never quite as colorful and loud,
As that heat in the wind.
It would never be anything that made
any sense to him.
He was aware now why his father drank.
He could see himself from his father’s angle
With the bottle, ice cold. Thick glass.
Never willing him to do or say anything that resembled
KIND.
He resisted.
He wouldn’t go down that road.
He picked up kinder vices, in the meantime.
To fill up his idea of this empty home.
He walked a lot.
He thought it was respectful.
A subtle nod to his comrades who could no longer.
Until he was able to hug his brother.
He continued to shave his head as well.
These little rituals willed him to keep going
in a world he no longer understood,
Stronger.
He’d done his time. He wanted his home back.
He wanted his kite. His brother. And Freedom.
He’d walk and ride the train.
Up and down again.
Still praying for rain.
A habit he never spent.
So much more to give.
More, more.more
Never enough.
Rain.
Cleansing.
Satiating.
Thirst.
Riding the train, the hate monger lingered.
Up and down the narrow width of the 25th.
Underground. Train.
“Trump has made America great again.”
The monster of a man, in sheer size alone,
Screams.
He tries to close his eyes. See the blue.
His white water rafting with his Sister.
Aurora.
In Portland.
He can remember the name
of the place
The river
The streams.
And out comes the knife.
He could smell the metal a mile
Away.
It followed him from a place far away
he was supposed to be leaving
For the brothers he never got a chance to have,
and for the strangers’ freedom.
The tongue was pointed toward a young women
In a hijab.
It’s okay
She’s was increasingly more fidgety.
Scared.
He found himself tasting sand, wishing he didn’t care.
He stood up.
Then two.
Then three.
Protecting the girl in the hijab and the man’s right to hate her. He thought this was just speech. But thoughts provoke speech and actions. Hurtful words, turn to hurtful action.
The knife turned from her, and stabbed him.
First one.
Then two.
Then three.
He couldn’t see, or swallow.
Fell buy the monster’s boot, the movement of the train
Shifted him on the side, underneath a seat.
The three.
On this eve,
Of Memorial Day Weekend?
This was how his service would end.
He smiled. Felt lighter. Tasted no sand.
Just the red warmth that pumped out of him,
Beneath him.
The irony, he thought,
To die at home for her, and him, at home
Between them.
His soul was lifted, celebrated.
The lights embraced him like a long applause.
He didn’t need to be lauded, he felt his brother’s
Shoulders squeezing him.
It was heaven.
All the pain and suffering bled out onto floor.
No longer between them.
He was finally home.
He did it.
Freedom.
