I wear your tags around my neck,
my own personal lockets with your name engraved,
where they hang low enough to hear my
heartbeat pulse within the safety of my chest.
The metal is cold against
the skin that covers my *******.
And they’ve folded the fifty stars
and thirteen red and white stripes that protected
your casket, even after your heart stopped beating
into its triangle form, and
they handed it over like a death sentence
given to the wrong inmate,
for a crime he never committed.
I held the shield against my body,
wrapping myself around the cloth,
curving my body about the ripples
which reminded me of the heart monitor
that showcased your breathing
before the line went flat.
But it felt nothing like the way
your body felt folded against mine
in the darkness of your last night home
before you left for your final tour
in the foreign land that was as strange
as the first time we made love,
exploring the geography of our
different maps holding buried treasures
beneath the surface of our skin.
In our strangeness, I lost everything to you,
wandering without a compass.
And ultimately I ended up losing you to
the strangeness of the land, instead of
in the familiarity of my arms.

And I wish I could’ve convinced you to stay.
But I was never good at tug of war,
and Iraq was so much stronger than I.
Standing next to your casket, dressed in a mask of tears,
destroyed mascara and black clothing for your funeral
as your fellow brothers in arms,
who became my brothers too, hold their guns
pointed towards you in the sky; your own salute.
But it’s peaceful to know that your ears no longer ring
with machine guns and you’ll sleep peacefully from here until forever
instead of fighting enemies, even in your nightmares and daydreams.
I am grieving but I am blessed
that you are no longer suffering and miserable.