i. afternoon. coffee slops over the edge of your cup as you set it down. we stare at the wreckage. i won’t clean it up.

ii. i hold your head in my hands, jumper paws swinging like empty wine skins. you lean into my touch, though i know you don’t want to. it is instinctive, this gesture; instinctive like coasters on tabletops and welcome mats at front doors. we don’t own either of these things. maybe this is why we began falling apart.

iii. the pantry is empty and darkness swallows you as you open the door. the grocery list lies untouched on the counter. i was meant to shop yesterday but i spent the day in our room. you take the list and hold it to my face, so close the letters blur. the paper shakes; your hand shakes. we are disintegrating, like so many old stars.

iv. i don’t know how to live with us anymore. you have forgotten.

v. you leave with the morning sun. i wake to a wiped clean countertop, coffee cup rinsed in the sink. the pantry is full. i don’t even know that you’re gone.

i am not a girl but a storm,
crackling and rumbling and shaking the ground with my strides.
measure me,
not by my beauty
but by my rage.

richter, beaufort; i am not contained by these numbers.
i am more than what they make of me.

i am not a girl;
i am a storm.

and a storm raises winds like hellfire and blazes through the urban sprawl and is infinite, omniscient, omnipotent.
i am infinite, omniscient, omnipotent.

fear me.

he was always told not to be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf;
the big bad wolf and his big bad claws and his big bad fangs and the wicked way his eyes would gleam r e d in the dark.
do not be afraid,
                           liebling, his mother would say,
brushing his hair from his forehead before kissing him goodnight.
he would curl under the covers,
                                                         ­ curl in,
                                                                ­        curl in,
                                                                ­                     curl –

oh, no.

do not be afraid of the big bad wolf, he tells himself,
staring at his mother’s coffin as it is lowered slowly into the ground.
(it was not an open casket. could not be an open casket. her lip was split and swelling and the bruise over her eye was too dark to cover and his father’s knuckles are still red and raw to the touch.)
do not be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,
but when his father lays a meaty hand on his shoulder and squeezes,
                                                       ­                                                                 ­   he shivers.

“i am not afraid of the big bad wolf,” he says into the mirror,
staring at his own split and swelling lip.
he meets felix and loves felix and does not bring felix home with him –
until the day that he does.

“he’s not the big bad wolf anymore,” felix says when he tells him what he’s done.
his clothes are rank with smoke and burning flesh,
                                                          ­                                and he remembers his mother, and the closed casket at her funeral.
“i know,” he says, straightening his tie.
(this casket is closed, too.)

there is no such thing as the big bad wolf,
not now, not today, not when the time for fairy tales has long since passed.
now, his hands itch for a gun,
now, his fingers itch to pull the trigger,
now, he is restless and he is ****** and he is a criminal.
(who’s the big bad wolf now?)

“my father was a monster. and so are you. and so am i.”
his funeral will be a closed casket, too. he smiles.
                                                                ­                       kala weeps.
he sticks the gun in his back pocket and thinks of his mother.
do not be afraid,
                            liebling.
i am not, he wants to tell her. i am not. not anymore.

(but still he sleeps with the gun beneath his pillow still he dreams of retribution from hands dripping with blood still he wakes and forgets that he is safe still he breathes and is afraid, deep down, is afraid of the wolf he has become.)

i. let us offer each other a sign of peace. you turn and you reach and there is your hand and here is their hand and here is your heart, between. your grip is firm, hands not yet calloused, and the words like a mantra fall from your lips. peace be with you. peace be with you.

ii. the crucifix hangs above your bed, painted gold, and like gold it glitters. you kneel on the floor and the wood is rough on your skin and you clasp your hands and say father, father. you have heard of a war and though it is not yet yours still you kneel and you pray and you think father, save me.

iii. your hands shake.

iv. war has come like revelations said it would and you rub your hands together so they won’t seize up. you thank god and you curse god for the 1A stamped on your enlistment form.

v. you read your bible: do not think that i have come to bring peace to the earth. i have not come to bring peace, but a sword. you read your bible and you think: this is not what i remember.

vi. the war does not end before you get there. it makes you lose track of the days, the weeks, the months you have been in europe and away from home and away from god. you wear your crucifix around your neck but the chain is hidden by your uniform and in the winter of the bois jacques, it burns your skin like a brand. father, father you pray in your foxhole, but the noise of artillery drowns out your words so you stop.

vii. you look at julian in the snow and his arms are spread out like wings. the blood bubbles from his neck and seeps into the ground and you watch and you think, war is hell. you leave julian to the krauts and cannot ask forgiveness because you don’t want this sin wiped away.

viii. on the ground, in the snow, julian was a crucifix. you don’t pray with your own anymore.

ix. father, father you say to the sky. if this patrol kills you, you won’t be going to heaven. your gun is heavy and your ghosts are heavier and you think of a classroom on a sunny afternoon. thou shalt not ****** you wrote in cramped, careful handwriting and you think:

x. i am a murderer.

xi. today and tomorrow and ten days from now blend into one in austria and you want to stay here for the rest of your life. your crucifix beats in time with your heart and you haven’t looked at it since haguenau. you don’t know if you want to. you don’t know if you can.

xii. and then you are home and the crucifix above your bed is painted gold. do you know what happened to me over there, you ask it. do you know what i did to survive. you take the chain of the cross around your neck and unclasp it with shaking fingers. you place it by your bedside. the watch you stole off the corpse of a dead german ticks away the seconds. you watch the hand creep around to twelve and you think father, father. you do not kneel.

xiii. forgive me father, for i have sinned. the words leave a metallic taste in your mouth.

xiv. you read your bible: be broken, o peoples, and be shattered; and give ear, all remote places of the earth. gird yourselves, yet be shattered; gird yourselves, yet be shattered. you close your bible and you think:

xv. peace be with you.