I Will Never Forget

I will never forget the man I fell in love with, a man who once felt whole, who now bellows through broken nights of blood-stained desert, who sees ashen faces frozen in sand squalls and calls out for brothers and sisters encaged behind barb-wire fences. I listen for his silence to speak, for bombs to detonate, for bullets ablaze in his burnt memories. How can I keep vigil every night while he wrestles sleep? Love is a tender hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, a voice to quiet ghosts, but love falls again and again. I wake entrenched in him, his Irish rye taste, muscles clenched, surface entangled in foreign lands and the earthy pines of home. I fear my own needs, confused by boulders piled higher, arms reached out, his bare back turned away – I push and pull, pinned to him, tormented by his pain, his hardened shell in tornadic dreams. When his beautiful mind slips into terror and disappears in black, even spring no longer holds tomorrow’s birth. Even the gardener, distressed, retreats in snowdrifts of moonless night. Seasons come and go, the petals wilt, the leaves dry, and the skies become unsettled by violent storms. Puddled in sweat again, his eyes weep without words. He is noise, a restless drum pounding in my ears. Blue veins bleed coagulated tears, and I, with heavy red lids, watch hecklers taunt. Faceless widows circle around demonic flames, sparks dance in their cool clearing. I smell their root, like licorice, moist and dark when he slips again. Then, comes morning. He lifts mountains to sky, and I forget the night. He colors my silent soul in sapphire. With a trace of one finger, I sigh, new like a hopeful dawn. Darkness forgotten, I tumble soft through lavender clouds in bloom and ladles deep in his warm, starry-eyed wake. I lay beside every nuance of his camouflaged rhythms – his march, stomp, glide, his lowered stance accepted in strength and weakness. Another bloody night beats on stone, and I try again to keep vigil as he succumbs to yesterday’s battlefield.