I.
Auntie’s fingertips were always stained
with the blood of scarlet petunias
in summer, a pile of
wilted blooms in a Pyrex bowl.
This is how they grow so beautiful, she told me,
so when Uncle’s knuckles grew red with her blood
and since she always stayed at his side
i thought it must be the same for people.
II.
Truckin’—got my chips cashed in…
Uncle’s favorite song crackled over the speakers
as I rode in his cab across the state line,
army men in my lap.
A three-fingered hand chucked a lieutenant out the window
into the golden wheat.
I knew he lost those fingers
in some faraway place called Vietnam.
Later that night,
I sat in the empty back of the truck,
nothing to play with,
imagining my lieutenant marching through wheat,
dodging gunfire,
listening to the bang bang bang
as Uncle and the lady he met in the lot
cleaned out the cab.
III.
I came home from Iraq
after losing ******* to an IED
and drove straight to Auntie’s.
We pruned petunias in silence.
She grew purple and black alongside the red now,
velvet flowers the color of her left eye,
of the blossom on her shoulder.
I heard my drill sergeant.
Blood! Blood! Blood makes the grass grow!
Turn this ******* desert into an oasis!—
and I knew why Vietnam was a jungle.
Uncle got home. “Hey, Uncle,” I said,
“how about we go for a drive like old times?”
IV.
I killed the engine next to a wheat field.
“Blood on your hands,” Uncle said.
“I’ve been pruning the petunias with Auntie,” I told him.
“You gotta get rid of the wilted ones
so the plant can grow. Flourish.”
“Naw, I mean, from Iraq,” he said. “Blood. You killed
any men?”
“Not yet,” I said.
V.
Auntie and my boy and I sing along to Bryan Adams
in the cab—
Out on the road today,
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac;
a voice inside my head says don’t look back,
you can never look back…
He’s got a lap full of Army men.
Across from a field of wheat,
a little patch of grass
blazes emerald in the midday sun.