What Remains
He calls for fire on his position.
Not the sandbag walls of Taji,
but the polyester cradle of his couch,
the place he returns each night
so he will not ruin the warmth
of his lover’s bed.
The television flickers against his skin,
dragging him through exhaustion,
through the blur of half-sleep
where he becomes his own witness,
unshaven, hollow, waiting
for a voice to pull him awake or under.
He hears it as he drifts.
A child’s voice. Soft. Certain.
Good night, Daddy.
The slipping begins.
The space between waking and sleep
opens like a fault line.
Small hands creep along his ribs,
slow as vines reclaiming stone.
They cling the way his son once clung
on the stairs, face buried,
as if homecoming could be reversed
by touch alone.
The hands explore his skin.
Fingers work patiently,
learning him the way ivy learns a statue.
They draw him deeper into the cushions,
into the place beneath the fabric
where memory waits.
Something wet touches his lashes.
He cannot tell if it is tears
or time.
He refuses to see them again.
He calls for fire on their position.
So he will not face the small faces
he remembers, the cheeks carved
with the same blood darkening
the dusk beneath his eyes.
He knows it is a dream, only a dream,
yet he feels fingernails dig into his skin,
sharp as talons, opening him, excavating
cutting free the parts that were good
before he called for fire.
What remains
refuses to sleep.
The Things We Need To Sleep
Stained sheets.
Trembling limbs
lost in the corners
of a couch,
among leftover
pizza crumbs.
I hear the bottle
in my mind,
rattle, rattle.
Rattle, rattle.
Some time is saved.
Some feeling muted.
Grief dulled
as each hour of night
drifts past
Bud Light empties
ringing the floor.
The mercy of sleep
will outlast these moments,
like carbon packed into creases,
found only by the angriest sergeant
on inspection before leave.
Outlast us all
will the brass that escapes
wandering eyes and searching fingers
in the tall grass of the range.
My fingers search now,
drifting closer,
lifting cushions the way Kevlar
presses into sore places
after a firefight.
To find, finally,
by reaching beneath
stained sheets
and the weight of the couch,
one unopened beer
and the rattle
of sleep.
Joshua Raymond Bennett is a poet and veteran who lives in Syracuse, New York. He has deployments to the Middle East, South America, and the Horn of Africa.
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