One more ship.
Another hulking piece of steel
rocking on black water
like the world has not had enough of this yet.
One more takedown.
Climb the wet ladder,
taste rust and salt on your teeth,
feel your knees complain against the salt.
Somewhere in the back of my head
a small voice keeps asking,
can I go home now,
like a kid tugging at a sleeve.
When is this tour over?
When is this tab paid?
How long can a man keep pulling the trigger
before the trigger owns him.
Jimmy is in front of me again,
like always,
broad back, helmet, that little tilt of his head that means move.
I am at the end of the line,
new enough to still listen,
not one of the frogman legends,
just the demo guy they handed a rifle to
so the roster would look complete.
The stack drifts forward
like a single animal with too many legs.
Left, right, down the metal throat of the corridor,
rooms kicked open, corners burned out with light,
space after space cleared,
nothing but sweat and breathing and the taste of your own tongue
until there is only the engine room left,
the hot iron heart of the ship.
We slide in toward it,
and everything in me whispers
almost done,
almost done.
From the right side a gun appears,
just a hand and a muzzle,
not even a full man yet.
One shot.
We have heard thousands of them,
but this one reaches in and rewrites Jimmy.
His shoulder is there, then gone,
erased in a burst of meat and noise.
It opens like a butchered thing,
red everywhere,
white tendons hanging like snapped wires,
pieces of him thrown across the bulkhead
like the room changed its mind about him.
There is nowhere to put a tourniquet.
You cannot cinch down on a missing piece.
You cannot wrap a bandage around nothing.
The corridor fills with shouting,
all the standard-issue phrases
we were trained to bark
so we do not have to invent honest ones.
And under all that noise
a smaller question keeps knocking:
Why can I not go home?
Why am I still here?
Jimmy has a family.
He has a little girl who will never feel
that ruined arm around her again,
never get lifted out of a chair,
never get spun in the air
for the pure,
stupid joy of it.
Those moments are leaking out of him
onto the floor of a foreign ship
that will never know his name.
Later there is the helo,
the endless engine roar,
the wind clawing at us,
Jimmy strapped down, eyes wide,
waiting for somebody to say this means something.
I sit with my rifle between my knees
like a tired apology
and wait with him,
for the corpsman to mutter comfort,
for the radio to cough out purpose,
for whatever god is on shift
to step up and explain the math.
For what do we do this?
For which flag, which story,
which old man in a suit,
do we trade shoulders and daughters and sleep.
The rotors pound the night into fragments,
the ship shrinks behind us into the dark,
and the question stays,
heavy, unfinished,
like a sentence no one here
has the courage
to write all the way to the end.
Nov 21, 2025
Nov 21, 2025 at 7:36 PM UTC
One more ship.
Another hulking piece of steel
rocking on black water
like the world has not had enough of this yet.
One more takedown.
Climb the wet ladder,
taste rust and salt on your teeth,
feel your knees complain against the salt.
Somewhere in the back of my head
a small voice keeps asking,
can I go home now,
like a kid tugging at a sleeve.
When is this tour over?
When is this tab paid?
How long can a man keep pulling the trigger
before the trigger owns him.
Jimmy is in front of me again,
like always,
broad back, helmet, that little tilt of his head that means move.
I am at the end of the line,
new enough to still listen,
not one of the frogman legends,
just the demo guy they handed a rifle to
so the roster would look complete.
The stack drifts forward
like a single animal with too many legs.
Left, right, down the metal throat of the corridor,
rooms kicked open, corners burned out with light,
space after space cleared,
nothing but sweat and breathing and the taste of your own tongue
until there is only the engine room left,
the hot iron heart of the ship.
We slide in toward it,
and everything in me whispers
almost done,
almost done.
From the right side a gun appears,
just a hand and a muzzle,
not even a full man yet.
One shot.
We have heard thousands of them,
but this one reaches in and rewrites Jimmy.
His shoulder is there, then gone,
erased in a burst of meat and noise.
It opens like a butchered thing,
red everywhere,
white tendons hanging like snapped wires,
pieces of him thrown across the bulkhead
like the room changed its mind about him.
There is nowhere to put a tourniquet.
You cannot cinch down on a missing piece.
You cannot wrap a bandage around nothing.
The corridor fills with shouting,
all the standard-issue phrases
we were trained to bark
so we do not have to invent honest ones.
And under all that noise
a smaller question keeps knocking:
Why can I not go home?
Why am I still here?
Jimmy has a family.
He has a little girl who will never feel
that ruined arm around her again,
never get lifted out of a chair,
never get spun in the air
for the pure,
stupid joy of it.
Those moments are leaking out of him
onto the floor of a foreign ship
that will never know his name.
Later there is the helo,
the endless engine roar,
the wind clawing at us,
Jimmy strapped down, eyes wide,
waiting for somebody to say this means something.
I sit with my rifle between my knees
like a tired apology
and wait with him,
for the corpsman to mutter comfort,
for the radio to cough out purpose,
for whatever god is on shift
to step up and explain the math.
For what do we do this?
For which flag, which story,
which old man in a suit,
do we trade shoulders and daughters and sleep.
The rotors pound the night into fragments,
the ship shrinks behind us into the dark,
and the question stays,
heavy, unfinished,
like a sentence no one here
has the courage
to write all the way to the end.
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