Catalyst

Motherboard

I'm onstage in my sauna suit dress blues & feeling the weight that I've lost & the too-tight bun pulling my face  into the perfectly professional soldier smile & the headache where my hair is battling the too-tight grip of my scalp & I'm looking out at all the eyes fixed on screens scrolling through Instagram squares & not even bothering to shoot me with their judgmental flat stares & wishing they could see the human in the uniform & worried that maybe there isn't much of one left anyway but then I look at you there in the very front row in your very best shirt & tie sitting at attention even though you don't know it yet & so eager & hungry to be where I am & do what I've done that I have to look away & then I see your mother beside you still wearing her Walmart vest & nametag because she has to go straight to work after this at the second job she got so you could have a good shirt & tie for those scholarship interviews & maybe an old beater car when you graduate if she can budget just right between now & then & she's fighting the urge to reach out & try to tame that one wild curl of yours before it falls in your eyes & then she fights to hold back tears remembering that first haircut & the little wisp she saved away in your baby book & how you pretended to be so embarrassed when she showed it to your girlfriend & how your cheeks flushed pink like mine must be up here on the stage in my sauna suit & if she only knew that she's the real hero here & now I have to launch my too-rehearsed speech singing the praises of all the mostly-entitled scholars & athletes & leaders who are the future of the Army's officer corps & I struggle to see my reflection in their iPhones & then I lose my place...

...because I realize they are not like me & they were born into war & for them the twin towers are a meme not a memory & Iraq & Afghanistan have always been in their history books & their parents wouldn't push them to serve & they're rightfully afraid to die because that's what        happens on the not-fake news every day & then I look at you standing tall & proud while they slump & scroll & I speak of your distinctions & accomplishments & you're the first in your family to go to college & you're going to       become an Army officer & a doctor & your mother loses her battle with her tears & I feel the weight I've lost like a cavern where my heart once was & I'm empty knowing I cannot promise her you'll always come home safe & I know you'll never be the same again & as I hand you this       scholarship check  like a ticket to freedom & a commitment to win the war you were born into I know it's not my fight anymore & I shake your hand to welcome you into this   battle-scarred broken family & you shake mine because you learned respect & I look into your hungry eyes & I long to go back to where you are & have the chance to make the choice again knowing all that I know & don't know now & in this very moment I hug your mother & I tell her that I would do it all over again just to live a moment like this right here with you & I know it's what she needs to hear & I feel the weight I've lost & the war inside me rages on & I sacrificed the choice she made & I know I don't know all that I've lost.