When my husband goes to war
He walks out of a door, and
Into the darkness of our front lawn,
With grass curling around his feet
Like snakes, and the street is a river,
This foreign territory, now,
Now that he will be gone,
Gone for one whole year,
But he is turning around now,
Halfway across the grass, and
Stopping, or
How the floodlight from our garage snaps on,
And is streaming across it, the grass, that street,
And my husband, in this landscape of him leaving,
And I can see him, standing there, his head shaved,
A soldier, now, dog tags around his neck,
With numbers on them, so they will know
Who he is, identify his body, if he gets killed,
Blown up, in pieces, and unrecognizable, and
He is saying to me, I’ll be back.
