Trigger Warning

“Oh yeah? Did you kill anybody?"

Is what people ask when they see

smeared across my past

like bloodstains on a white sheet

US Marine

Iraq

twice

And they cant understand the answer because they cant understand the question

“I really think you got that guy man! We should radio back and get you a confirmed kill!”

“Im pretty sure I shot that guy in the back.”

"Holy shit. Miller and Johnson are dead."

And I never knew what to say to my friends

Because I was busy doing mental math

Emotional equations

In their eyes

How many more times

could they be blown up

before they were unreliable

Divide the fear with rage

because you had a job to do

someone had to get in the truck

and push the fragile

blindfolded bodies back

with his boot so he could sit down

below the armor

away from the snipers

And one of them was shaking

it was brutally cold

And his cowering skinny teenage body

shook

It was like mine had been not long ago

for the whole convoy

hours

And I carry these memories in the same

tissues as the ones

that carry my sleeping infant son

nuzzled against my chest

under a blanket

warm

safe

Some of us let them spill out of our veins

onto bathroom floors

in ditches and alleys

car wrecks

shaking

Any good devildog

prefers the screams of the dying

to the screams of the living.

And the math keeps coming out negative

when I equate the cost of our

cell phones candy wrappers

vibrators golf courses

with

https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/sscistudy1.pdf

And I subtract the dark areas of my mind

from what can be filled with love

and am still at war.