I Miss The Forever War

I miss our forever war.

I miss my brothers.

Even the assholes. Even the dipshits...

Even the asshole dipshits.

I miss Iraq. God damn I miss Iraq. And it is not in vain that I use His name. Because what could be more damned, and so consistently that the origins of damnation is cosmic. I didn't reach this conclusion in the Bible but from reading the dark dank cells of Kirkuk and the girl's flesh that put grease spots on our HMMWVs that wouldn't ever come out; The cycle of us killing Takfiri, the Taqfiri killing the Iraqi Police, and the Iraqi Police killing us; the fucking miserable fucking heat like the whole fucking place is getting swallowed up by Hell; The kid on the floor flexicuffed looking up at me with no fear in his eyes; The fucking IPs who never leave the station, the ones who kill other IPs, The ones who are so fucking dirty that a crew of Green Peace goofballs with a shipping container full of Dawn dish soap couldn't clean 'em off if they were working around the clock in fucking shifts. Dirty cops. Fuck! Threw a grenade under our truck in their own station probly buried the 2000 lb bomb in the middle of the highway that disintegrated 5 American sons probly assassinated Farras. FUCK. It is indeed damned. I have carried the stink of burning brimstone with me and it won't ever, ever come off. And I don't want it to because

I miss Iraq. I miss the little Iraqi Christian girl who helped her mother clean the JCC. I miss how much she symbolized hope and renewal. But I don't miss the tendon hanging off the back of my shell-shocked sergeant. Was it the coward or the brave cop who bear-hugged him and took the brunt of the blast. Or was it the little girl who was torn apart. Or are all three just one flesh now. Anyway, one of them left a tendon dangling off my sergeant's shoulder. And flesh of their flesh, soul of our souls were left seared into the fiberglass of our trucks and that shit ain't ever, EVER coming out. Fitting. War doesn't wash away and that's good because

I miss Iraq. Romans loved their legions so long as it was a long-distance relationship. Otherwise, the good ole boys in horse-hair mohawks and skirts were a burden and a nuisance. And that's why Romania was taken from a bunch of rubes and given to vets so they could drink and farm and fight and fuck well away from the city lights of Rome. But I guess we ran out of real estate or the rubes found a better lawyer because all we have left is our

forever war. Leave our forever war alone. I'm begging you on bended knee. It's all we have. The only place left we can call home. It's where we left the girl. Where we left Darrell. The sign that said no shaving pubic hair in the sinks was made for him, he says. That was funny. Him leaving a ten-year-old boy to grow up without a dad made our war adventures less fun. Him sharing his last chew with Bobby as he received mouth-to-mouth as he lie dying was the most profound war performance art imaginable. But not so funny. I said hearts and minds at the pre-mission briefing and he said, yeah one in the heart, two in the mind, and everybody laughed because it's a badass line and it bears all the markings of irony that he got it in the aorta and was a dead man but you can't call it irony if you werent there and if you did you might catch a hard right to your temple and drop like a sack of

shit I miss Iraq. I miss Sammy, the ex-army-officer-under-Saddam-turned terp who loved soccer and greeted us with a cheery "what's up guys" every day just as neighborly as you please but would bark in arabic like a junkyard dog if we were barking at the silly cunts in American so nothing would be lost in translation and damn if Sammy wasn't going to be a cowboy with us and come to Wyoming and was more American than most Americans and could've lived with anyone of us gladly but he fucking bled out as the 25th convoy creeped back to camp at a safe 20mph and we had to see his dad and his brother and they looked just like him and we gathered up all the cash we could, our squad, and Sammy's life ended up being worth about 380 dollars- cash, but his dad told us if we were Sammy's brothers then we were his sons and damned if I don't just fall apart just thinking about

those beautiful sunrises we watched come up sitting in lawn chairs in various states of decay that cost 7.99 apiece at the PX trailer as we chained-smoked Djarim clove cigarettes like the cultured motherfuckers we were knowing we had not a care in the world as long as the guns were oiled and the trucks greased and fuck worrying about anything else but life was good and war was fun and if you had your boys with you then you could do anything and go anywhere and

when Roberts shot himself running from the Highway Patrol I realized we weren't where we were supposed to be anymore. Wyoming wasn't home anymore. The CHUs and GP Medium we were stacked up in was forever going to be the most homiest of homes we would ever know. FOB McHenry was home because it was the whole world in a bottle and we were safe there even though we were dying one by one because there we were beyond fear but when we came home I was afraid I was going to fucking explode and end up in prison after a bullet-riddled police chase like that wild Indian Whiteman and I would have been given anything to catch a ride back to a combat zone so I could feel safe again, safe with the 85 pounds of gear and armor on my back like I'm a real life fuckin ninja turtle and the world was good because at least I would always have our big beautiful

forever war. So leave it alone. You bastards. You rotten bastards! All the war materiel dress right dressed all over big beautiful FOB Warrior like we would be forever in the forever war and Burger King is there so we literally had all we needed and we could pass on our armor and our guns and cloves and our CHUs and our chews and our 7.99 lawn chairs in various states of decay to our sons and they again to their sons in perpetuity like a family legacy that is an honored privilege and not a burden but a playground where you could run and play and shoot and feel the blast of explosions ripple through you and charge you up and get you hard and mean and nasty and fucking unstoppable and all it cost were about 1000 American human sacrifices a year and a few natives besides and we could all fly around that merry go round of death with the taqfiri for as long as we could

hold on. Don't gift us a 'splosion party that never ends and then end it.

Write down our wills at 19 and pull us from our mothers and dads and siblings that we leave at airports with our chests puffed out and shoulders rolled back and looking big and invincible as ever because that bald eagle is kawing in my ears until they ring and they keep ringing because that Ma Duece is firing and we are all going out the wire again on a never ending loop because this is

the forever war.