Be Thou At Peace

You have served us well

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

I poke my shadow with a paper clip. Then lose it. Gone in the direction of a collapsed bridge over the Euphrates. Gutierrez sits in a hole.

Private, do you know the consequences of numbness? He smiles and answers: the benefit of a job well done?

I tap my fingers against my magazine in celebration. Each round is a collection of mountains in Konar Province, each day we gather spun copper penny reports and learn the names of dead brothers.

I carry my steel bat on every patrol. Just in case. And we keep our bayonets with us. Just in case.

We ride in Humvees. Each Humvee is a candle. We are wicks. I ask him if he has family. No wife and no kids, he says, grinning like he’s made of time.

Vultures circle overhead, but he’s good on the machine gun, like a lumberjack with a chainsaw.

I tell him, hey kid! It’s how you cut it down that matters. He’s smiling like hummingbirds cause I’m the big brother he never had. You gonna tear em up or what? Yes sir!

Private G scans his sector then answers my request for a SitRep with a giggle, saying, nothing out here but a donkey, ELLL-TEEE!

Ash smeared on his forehead, nose black with soot, the sun has made him dark. I turn my paperclip like a…