The car in the handicapped space
of the parking lot with the
Iraq Veteran bumper stickers breaks
my heart. I wonder if the sand in his boots
can hold the pedals down. I wonder if the
visions in his head can grip
the steering wheel. I bet some nights
he remembers that a hospital bed can be
a prison cell.

That hospital bed was not
my prison cell. It was a welcoming back
to the life I thought I had before, it was my anthem
careening through the dark. I heard it in the spaces
between their words. Their words were holes
drilling themselves into my muscles, I felt them
spinning toward the grenade that was my heart.

Once, my muscles were strong enough
to cover me like a blanket. I remember how
they sheltered me. I remember feeling proud
to wear the covering of my skin. I was a tiger
when he touched me. I prowled in darkness,
I slept during the day, some nights I remember
that a bedroom door can lock me up, my parents
locked me in a tower, they told me I'd be safe there.

Maybe I should have stayed inside. Maybe
it would have kept me from the car, the hospital,
it would have kept him from the war, maybe I'd be there
still. Maybe he knows how it feels to hold
an animal inside your chest, maybe he knows
what it's like to feel it shaking in your bones.

Maybe this man in the parking lot
can tell me what a gunshot sounds like
between the windows of your ears. I think
it would sound better than my own voice
singing me to sleep. Some nights, the lights
outside my window are too bright. I bet
he could tell me what that means.