Scope

When I talk about the night raids,

My husband’s face closes like a door,

Because I am asking how, how it works,

But I should know better,

Because this is war,

And there are things he cannot say.

What I know is this,

There are lists,

How there are names on them,

Names of men,

That other men turn in,

And how they say, they turned,

Or they’re with them now, the Taliban,

And they become the targets, that soldiers hit,

Clearing their houses, in the pitch black, searching,

For something, or how, sometimes, people get killed,

The soldiers searching,

Or the men,

Their wives, and their children, and

It is night, now, in my kitchen,

And my husband is, here, now,

Standing in front of me,

Saying words that are safe,

Like good and night,

And I realize,

Even though my husband did not do it,

Never went on foot patrol, or knocked

Down doors, or cleared a house,

He was there,

There in Afghanistan,

This country of night raids,

Where men will hand you

The names of other men,

And I think about that,

My husband, the shape that a name would take,

If it was curled inside his fist, or how he drove,

Down roads, passing bloodstains, on the ground,

Never knowing who or if, and

Later, my husband is in bed,

And I am awake,

Standing at a window, in my kitchen, over

A sink, thinking about it,

The scope of this war,

Ten years, now, or him,

My husband, how I still do not know, everything,

Or about targets,

The human body,

And how it looks through the scope of an M4,

A head, the collection of limbs,

Torso, this chest, surrounding

The heart as if it mattered.

There

Somewhere, right now, there is,

A soldier, kicking down a door, to a house,

Where someone says the insurgent lives,

A man, who they call, a target, he tells her,

His wife, over a telephone, describing them,

The night raids, a series of doors, the houses,

Where they find weapons, or nothing, at all,

Houses made of men and women and mud

And children and a language,

A language that he knows now,

A little, now that there is a war,

And he has been, there, for over a year, or

Even, what he does not say, how doing this,

Walking patrol, night raids, the war, all of it,

Is a darkness, and more dust, another door,

Or how he knows it will follow him,

When he, finally, goes home, again,

On a plane full of soldiers, in a sky,

That doesn’t belong to anyone, really, he tells himself,

At least, not as much as this, another night in Afghanistan,

A war, this country, those children, or mud, and a language,

All of it, how it will follow him home, to America,

To his wife, who is, right now, there,

Sitting in a dark living room, or how,

She walks her own patrol each night,

Through that dark house, checking doors,

Checking locks, sitting on a couch, sitting,

In this deployment, alone, and again, and

She is telling herself, this is not living,

The pitch black,

The waiting, or

The weight of it,

The weight of how it feels when she doesn’t,

The moment she stops waiting and lets him go.

Ours

When I hear the news,

About the massacre in Kandahar,

About how seventeen Afghans were killed,

Shot, in their homes, in the middle of the night,

I am standing in my kitchen, eating an orange,

Peeling back the skin, and, then, tearing if off,

In pieces that are as thick as human cartilage.

And when I see the photograph of a boy,

This boy, who is wrapped, in a blanket,

Lying, there, in the back of a pickup truck,

Lying across my computer screen, dead,

His face turned to the side, eyes closed,

And his feet, bare and still and resting,

Side by side, like he is asleep,

I cannot breathe.

And it is the middle of the night in America.

And I know it should be dark, here, by now.

So I am turning,

Turning off my computer,

Turning off the television,

A light left on in the living room,

Turning at the end of a hallway,

To stand watch, between the bedrooms

Of my two sons, both asleep,

Safe, their faces facing doors,

And roads, that are far away,

Far away from war,

Or later, when I cannot sleep,

How I will turn over in bed, to face him,

My husband, who was sent over there,

To fight this Global War on Terror,

And how I will always think about it,

A pickup truck, that boy, and this globe,

Half covered in war, bloodied and ours.

Line

She is standing, here, in a grocery store,

Under the fluorescent light suspended,

Above her head, and from the ceiling,

Standing in front of the refrigerated meat,

That is laid out in front of her, butchered,

A thigh, a breast, a leg,

Or chopped and ground,

Pieces of meat wrapped tightly in plastic that is

Stretching over them, like skin, and she forgets,

Forgets what she is looking for, because she is,

Remembering what he said on the telephone,

His voice in Afghanistan and, here, in her ear,

About what happened, there, in Kandahar, or

How an American soldier, how he lost his mind,

Went and killed sixteen Afghans, nine children,

A massacre, her husband whispers over it, this

Telephone line, and she is here, now, in America,

Moving down aisles of a grocery store, moving

Through the months, because she is still waiting,

Waiting for him to come home again, waiting

In a checkout line, and thinking about lines,

Lines she draws through the days on a calendar,

Bodies shot dead, lined up on the side of a road,

Or the lines of war,

Lines soldiers cross and lines they don’t,

And the imaginary lines that divide countries,

Our country from theirs,

Or how different he will be,

Her husband,

When he crosses over again, and comes home.

 

Cross

When my husband comes home,

From Afghanistan,

He wears his combat boots.

And I watch him out

A window, mowing the lawn,

Pacing back and forth in grass,

With his boots laced up over sweat pants,

Pushing the lawn mower, a domestic tank,

And I know the war is still here.

Here in my house, here on this lawn,

And my husband, in his combat boots,

How the war is making its imprint on grass,

Marking its territory across our backyard,

Because I am lying in bed, here,

Thinking about them, his boots,

Standing by the garage door,

With mud caked on them,

And I am thinking about them,

The men who die over there,

Die in war,

And how the soldiers who are left,

Make a cross,

Empty boots on the ground, a gun

Standing on its butt, with the bayonet

Attached, a metal skeleton, and that

Empty helmet hanging on top,

A battlefield cross my husband says,

Describing the times he stood there,

Remembering the men who died,

Over there, instead of him, a bomb,

Their bones scattered across highways,

And a wife, back in America, who is not,

Not listening for the telephone anymore,

Not waiting for the war to be over, or

For her husband to come home, because

She is kneeling on the floor, instead,

In front of a closet, holding an old sweatshirt,

The one that doesn’t smell like him anymore,

Only a minute, she whispers, before letting go.

Wait

War is waiting.

A soldier, boots-on-ground, now,

Waiting to be told, it is time now,

Time to move into a zone of fire,

And use his gun,

And try to stay alive.

His wife, in a house, in the middle

Of the night, a telephone ringing,

That sounds like the bugle they play

At military funerals, because she is here,

At home, waiting to be told, he is dead.

A child standing, there, a house of sand,

With a sheep, and a story, the story

You could never imagine, my husband

Tells me, that boy, waiting,

For the war to be over,

Even though,

He has never known anything else,

Or a child in America,

My child,

Sitting at a kitchen table,

Waiting,

Waiting ten more months,

For his father to come home.

Shake

The day I drop my husband off,

On a military base, where he will train,

Then go, off to Afghanistan, off to war,

I watch him walk away, looking back,

Once, halfway across the parking lot,

Halfway gone, and, then, disappearing,

Into, this, our year long deployment.

And I sit in the parking lot, in between,

Other cars, other soldiers, other wives,

The car next to me, with the engine off,

And a soldier, climbing out, getting out,

His duffel bag, from the trunk, and I watch,

As he leans through, the open car window, this parking lot,

Where a bus is waiting, kissing her, again, one more time,

Before he goes, again, one more time, back to Afghanistan,

This place that juts between them like land, like time or space,

The space and time it will take to get him back.

And he is holding the back of her head, pressing

Her face against his chest, which is covered now

In camouflage fatigues, standard issue, and he is

Saying, whispering, into her face and ear and hair,

How this will all be behind us soon,

Afghanistan, a war, another year long deployment,

This separation stretching out in front of them, like

The road she will take, driving home, alone,

Or the sky, he will drop through, on a plane,

That will drop, down, on a base in Kuwait,

Where they will give him his gun,

And where he will drop it back off,

Early,

On his way home,

This injury she cannot see,

TBI, they call it,

A Humvee, a bomb, a shaken brain,

And a phone call telling her something happened.