Misgivings

My father was a good man but he never told me how one prepares oneself for war. He had never been in any real life ones except the hell his own father gave him. I'm glad that that didn't pass down to me. But I had to face real-life wars. The one with dirt in your eyes and explosions rattling your brain swimming inside your skull.

But here, among the stiff grass and my back resting against a sturdy oak tree, I could forget all of that. All I have to do is crack open a book and turn my hearing to the sweet flowing bubbles of the creek bobbing at my bare feet.

The sun is like a sweet tea, perching on the tip of my toes while the rest of my body bathes in the shadows of the day. The wildlife knows not to disturb me, maybe they see it in my haunted eyes. They know of what fresh disaster I have escaped. Sure, everyone else in town could see the visible scars, but did they actually take a deep look into the bottomless pit that are now my eyes?

My eyes used to speak of such fathomless joys. That is why my wife married me. She said my eyes spoke volumes. But I stared at the mirror the other day and I saw my smile. It didn't match my eyes. Then I glanced to the left and saw her frown. She doesn't wrap her arms around my front and curl into my back anymore. I've lost that spark in my eyes that those songs lark about.

Maybe that is why she nags at me now, she used to be such a quiet creature before. Now, her voice is like claws dragging down my weary back. "Tyler do this, Tyler you were gone too long and this never got done, Tyler your son wants to learn how to swim, Tyler why aren't you working?" I could handle her. It was my son that makes me want to take the gun to my head. I don't know how to talk to him, he will never understand unless he ever goes to war himself, but he's far too young for that. And I hope he never has to.

She was the reason I set out for my temporary paradise. They know not where I go but I assume my son might know. He wanted to go to the cinemas. I could handle it before. The noise. The flickering of the camera. The hot breaths of others nearby. But now I can't. It reminds me of the stark white ceiling of the hospital tent. All I can see, hear, and taste is gritty blood and the metallic ting of a bullet. I can feel the cold dirt soaking further into my boots, the blows from overhead.

But the worst was being sought out in the cinemas the first time when I had returned.

I was wearing my suit, a few glistening medals adorning my sad self. Friends cheered me on. But others did not. After the flick ended I sat there, still as a statue. My breaths had been coming labored and my son shook my arm. Then a weaselly looking man came up and saw my medals. He scoffed. I'll never forget his words. They are engraved into my soul.

"What, old man? Went to battle and can't even handle a flicker anymore? Get a hold of yourself. you pathetic piece of shit." Then he kicked my boots and I stood up suddenly, startled and awoken. My mind was across the sea. "Some hero."

Sometimes I think he is right.

I take a deep breath, it flows over the gristly but sorta trim mustache, a sign of regrowth. Or at least I hope it means that. I try to get anything to mean something these days. It's like clinging to a string for some hope. And that string is about to be cut down.

The syrupy humid air is welcoming to me. I relish in it. It's so different than the air from over there, brutal and thin, cold and dark. Everything and nothing lurked there. The air of my childhood lungs were here and they wrap me up like a heavy blanket that I so long for.

I flick the thick page, my eyes devouring the text of an adventure. As a child, books were my escape. When I had married, I ventured a bit away from them, relishing in the distraction that was my dear wife. Now it's not a want, but a need to be distracted in a different world. A bee flies lazily close and sometimes I envy them. The bees. They are so carefree, nothing much to worry about.

Something above the book moves, catching my sight. I crane my neck up and lower the book flat into my lap. At first my brows twine down in confusion, but then, oh god, my blood runs flat. Then it surges up hot and boils through me, sets me on fire. My muscle squeeze as if I'm about to fall into a pit. And maybe I am.

No. No.

Not here. Not now.

This was, this is, my safe haven.

The battered helmet rises first. I drop the book to the side and stuff my fingers into my ears. He shouldn't have followed me here. He should have stayed behind. Why has God not answered my prayers? Why has he forsaken me here and left the devil in his place?

The strung tight forehead comes next. The last image of his face. One in absolute agony. I try to look away when his gray eyes rise from the water. The water is black now, no longer the safe blue it was seconds ago. I can't move. I'm stitched to the tree, my mouth an open orifice of torment.

I remember his nose was the smallest thing that the enemy had blown off of my good friend. Seeing the bright white bone, the absence of that hook and mole that I had grown used to. It shook to the core more than the sight of his missing lower torso and legs.

Oh, his mouth emerges next and that is when the hot scream pierces me to the tree. It doesn't matter that I stuff my ears as much as I can. It's like his angry scream is right next to my ears, broken chipped teeth biting the flesh of my ear.

It surges through me like an earthquake. And I'm back in the battlefield in my heart. It's racing like a horse, pounding against the bones of my chest. My mouth is still an open scream but nothing comes out, or maybe it does but I can't hear over his continuous roar. He wants vengeance, justice for his youth stolen away from him. He looked up to me like an older brother.

The nightmare is is that I don't know what to do. I don't know how I'm supposed to comfort a ghost that screeches so.

The only thing I can think to do in the moment is snap my hands forth. Like an invisible set of chains have broken. My hands pat the grass next to me with a frantic urgency. I'm looking for anything. Any answer to just stop his cries from reaching me. Because if I can't help him then the only answer is to deflect them from beating in my ears.

I clench my eyes shut, erasing him from my vision as my hands search the burnt grass.

I let forth a sob when the air pierces with my name from his lips. I want to scream back at him to shut up, but I don't have the bravery to tell him to.

Then my hands find purchase. I don't even have to look, my hands, as if separated from all logic, do the work for me. I don't feel the hot blood pour down. My arm jerks back from my ear, the railroad nail is soaked with the blood among its own personal rust. I jab it back in.

Then I switch, my hands drenched among my living being. The other ear goes next and it's like when you enter a cool spring on a mid-summer day. Refreshing. I don't hear anything, I am numb to any physical reality.

I rest my head against the tree and breath out a sigh of relief. I look ahead and he's still there, his mouth open, but I hear nothing. I smile at him. Then I wipe my hands on the grass and return to my own personal paradise of reading.

Maybe I shouldn't have done what I did. But I had to. I'll probably regret not looking back up at the creek at the splashes coming from a son who just wanted to learn how to swim. A son who was smart enough to find out where I was hiding. I wonder now what I must have looked like. Trails of blood on both sides of me and yet a serene look on my tilted head, red stained hands flicking between the pages of the past.

Copyright R. A. Myers | theblackrosepoem.blogspot.com | Do not copy. 2019 © 

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Inspired by this image that I bought... it has the name Tyler on the back.