THE AMERICAN DREAM

▷ e p i g r a p h

❝

"War makes boys men," they say.
I say that it makes men dead.
Brothers and husbands,
fathers and lovers leave home,
to travel across the great sea.

They come back in pieces, or not at all.
Mothers and wives and sisters do their best to put the bits back together,
If they make it back.
If not, they must mend themselves,
All alone.

The peices of who he was fit no longer.
As war slowly ripped them apart,
They glued themselves together,
By the cries of the wounded,
And the explosions of battle,
By the empty hole where their loved ones once were.

"Healing happens over time," they say. Not for those who have seen war.
They may be home,
But their mind is still on the beaches,
In the snow, or in the rain of combat.

Hunting is more like murder.
Car rides are military excursions.
The ceiling fan is the rotating blades of the fighter planes.
Beds become too soft—
It feels like he may sink to the ground. And food... good food...
He eats it like he may never eat again.

And he holds his lover, his mother, his children
Like they had been separated a lifetime...
And they all felt as though they had.
Husbands with scars of victory and defeat,
Wives with lines of worry,
And children all grown up.
Yes, they they went through changes—
A lifetime of it.

When she wakes up, and he's not there,
memories come flooding back.
All the lonely nights,
and mind-numbing panic at each mail delivery.
She'll never understand.
She'll never be able to grasp,
That the man she knew before,
Is no longer the man she knows now.

❞