Come
      in.
          Leave
      your
  shadows
              at
                 the
         door.

In 2005
my father,
a pastor,
decided that we would house
victims of
Hurricane Katrina.
Our beds would be given
to the ones
whose homes
had been submerged
in water
and humanity.

Kitty and Minnie
were twins
who slept with me every night.
I was only a child,
but I felt like a mother
to these two orphaned girls
who relived the horror
of seeing their grandmother rotting on a bench
every night.
They had nightmares
of their grandmother standing up from the bench
with maggot infested eyes
and green rotting skin
coming to kiss their cheeks.
They were 6 years old.

Eugene was 13
and his last image of home was
his father drowning in their attic
yelling for him to swim
out of a small hole in the ceiling.
His father never learned to swim.
Eugene waited on the roof of his house,
now his father's tomb,
for 3 days
until a helicopter came.

John was an 8 year old boy
with black skin
and silver teeth
who squeezed between me and Kitty every night.
He dreamt of his mother finding him,
and his dream came true;
I watched them walk away together.
Him
in awe of his mom being alive.
Her
drunk and high.
The last time I saw him
his mother was slapping him in the back of the taxi
that took him away from me.

I pray
that
they learned
to overcome
their nightmares.
I hope
every day
that they learned to stand up
to the ones telling them
that their experience
is a crutch,
an excuse,
to never be anything more than what their
parents
are.
I hope
they all learned
to swim.

In the small town I grew up in
the only place I could hear
poetry
was on YouTube.

I still think
it's beautiful
how I can't exit the page
until the sentence is done
like the interruption
can be heard
through my laptop.

When I was a girl
I thought love was
a guitar player
with
shaggy brown hair
colored eyes
a poet
a Christian
with perfect teeth.
I thought love
was
someone who would put up
with my craziness
and my insecurities.

I didn't know that
love
was ***** blonde hair
and
green eyes
with teeth that
weren't quite perfect
but would shape the words
"shut up"
every time I plucked an insecurity like a harp string.
I didn't know that love
hated reading
but would watch me while
my eyes caressed the words he could barely read
I didn't know that love
would be dyslexic.
But love
pretends to understand the words anyways.

I thought love
would stand the test of time.
I thought that when love
picked up a uniform and an M-16,
boarded a plane
it would grow stronger.

That was 2 years ago
this past May
and my place in your heart
has been replaced by a patch that reads
U.S. Army
Airborne
Ranger

Sometimes love
turns out to be
a soldier.

Sometimes
I want to write a poem
but my hands
don't know
how to type
the stories
my
heart
wants
to
speak.

The night you came home
I watched you sleep;
so innocent is your sleeping face.
I can hardly believing that this man
that I love so dearly
could take the life of anyone.

I walk to the kitchen
barefoot,
feeling the sand that has followed you home.
It covers everything
in a fine, gritty film,
a nagging memory
of the horrors you have faced.
The vacuum can't make this
go
away.

When you wake up
I look into your green eyes:
what have you seen
that makes your stare
look like that of an old man, much older than twenty?

You are so much more than a uniform.

You are battered books,
creases filled with sand.
The kind so fine
you can't shake it out.

You are midnight Skype sessions
where we rant about
exes and poetry
and you show me
on google maps
where you were stationed in Afghanistan
and where there used to be a village
which was home to a little girl
whose body was never found.

You are a whiskey fueled conversation
about jumping from airplanes
and how much you love writing
on the the night I first met you.
You remember..
when we shared the bed
with your best friend
who passed out around 2 a.m.
because he drinks so much bourbon
trying to forget the things he has seen.
He's only twenty years old.

Soldier,
you are more than a college drop out
waiting for his next deployment.
You are a pair of brown eyes
that squint when you get too drunk
and a closet filled with 87 button-up shirts,
which I think is ridiculous,
but you like because it makes you look classy.

You are a mind filled with
articles from scientific journals
pictures from 9gag
and a mental list of the girls you've charmed
(wait, you hate that word..)
into your bed
because you're making up for
experiences you fear you'll never have
if you come back next year in a body bag.

You are more than government property,
a tag on a uniform
or a rank, soldier.

If only you could see yourself
the way
I see you.