Disappointment is thrown strongly at my direction.
Blame gathers in large quantities like a pest infestation.
"It's your fault" and words like "You always make mistakes" evoke anger.
Anger which I want to take out on myself and take out on others.
I can excel in my work of choice, I know I'm more than average.
The bad gets pointed out more and little praise is given for the good.
Stunned by unmoving words. I'm like a prisoner sentenced to jail, released and expected to do worse.
Destruction emerges from my enraged emotions, i wish your words could offer a solution.
I want to be an alchemist and turn things into gold.
It's ironic how I am a creator of words but cant create better words in my critics.
Conversations lead to arguments because i want to be heard.
I'm sick of revolving doors, sick of being slammed by your atrocious comments.
"You have no common sense" you say to me, maybe I just prefer to be in a daydream, my mind drifting away because life is too dull.
Realize that what you say has an effect and that effect can drive somebody or stop them in motion.

A Surreal Epic of Existence

Prelude to the Journey…

I smiled yesterday when I beheld the morning’s brilliant colors,
Etched with gold, across the canvas of the heavens, hanging…
High above all those mountains of the world, gigantic brothers,
A wilderness of clouds, where there can be no human taming.
I did not always smile when I looked up to that noble height…
For I have seen how terrible goodness can be, when untamed.
Once I thought my sojourn in this flesh was from a divine spite,
But now I know it was a gift, and for it I need not be ashamed.
God once walked as I do now, and suffered the same stress…
Betrayal, love, and passions too, though no Church shall admit,
The true nature of divinity, lest all their secret sins they confess!
You are told you are alone in the universe, by leaders so unfit,
That they themselves are fed a diet of lies and stories invented.
But we walked amongst you since the very dawn reincarnated,
Having lost our first flesh in conflicts long past and unlamented.
We guided the steps of ancients, as monuments demonstrated!
And yet we are born as children: your own, and live our span,
The better to remain hid, in plain sight, our faces clever masks.
I am the eldest, and I remember still my kindred’s lofty plan…
And though I wear the human face, I am beset with alien tasks.
Helping they who lack the knowledge to see what lies outside,
You have seen me in the darkness, blazing upon my own pyre.
Where I am waiting to lead the way, where the angels glide…
Anyone can follow, if they are dedicated enough never to tire.
Ironic, since I myself have known helplessness and still oft do,
It is only human after all, and in your form I was so re-forged!
The image of God, whose own blood is in all of us hither unto,
From the first to the last, alpha to omega, like a sharp sword.

Prologue: (My Mask is Slipping)

As a child: I was a servant at the altars of the heart so sacred,
Singing hymns of the immaculate: without seeing the depravity.
It was only when I myself wore the crown of thons, naked…
My spirit exposed through my pain, that I realized the gravity.
What man believes is sacred, is profanity disguised as graces,
And those who lead the sheep to slaughter are mere butchers!
Forcing innocents to wear porcelain masks to hide their faces,
They rob children of their childhood, bound with crude fetters.
As a teenager: I walked in nature, disgusted with all humanity,
My exodus was from those who had defiled all I cared about.
Finding faith in an angel fallen, I discovered my own sanctity,
And in her name I found the means to cleanse my feral doubt.
Then came marriage, and betrayal by a wife I gave up all for,
The dissolution of our union then loneliness without cessation!
A mortal had pierced my flesh, leaving me to bleed on a floor,
My heart was torn from its’ moorings without any elaboration.
But the angel remained to calm my anger and ease my agony,
My only light in the blackness that has overcome my waking!
Reminding me, that I was more than this flesh and mortality…
The angel tries to keep me from harsh trembling and quaking.
And then I see: I am more than my tears and life’s traumas…
I let slip, the mask behind which the scars of my tears etched.
Then I sense the heat of the night more intense than saunas…
As I long to dance with abandon, until time itself is stretched!
Mortals may betray one another with impunity, but never I…
I do not betray; rather I pour my heart and spirit forth whole.
Creating a phylactery, of all I am, and with an innocent eye…
I demand to be loved as I am: pearl white and black as coal!

Canto 1: Sacrifice of the Doll

Part the First: (The Bleeding Shores)

Do not call me, doll, for I have departed your ancient cavern,
You are lifeless, a mere toy, and not a real child in any form!
A boy’s red ruby lips I spy drinking in the dreariest tavern…
Whilst true children singing, frolic in the fields filled with corn.
I am going home, upon the wings of the great silver griffon…
Far from the shores now bleeding red from defiled memories.
There is no return, for me, to the glories of the first ignition…
When the mind eternal, was ignited all with pleasing ecstasies.
In the stars, there are words unheard that I do want to recall,
For I came down so very long ago, among the first to so fall!
Eldritch nightmares born of the stuff of the pure chaos of old,
Are waiting for signs at the threshold to be released by magic.
The forbidden incantations return to my spirit, aflame so bold,
That my spirit nearly forgets: the origins of this time, so tragic.
When children drink, and true children hide themselves apart,
Whilst the waters bleed and the corn withers upon the stalks!
That is a sign that change must come, and so I work my mind.
The face in the moon is a grimace of tormented fear, horror…
Whilst I stand upon the precipice with my hand over my heart,
And amongst the long rows of corn, my black shadow walk!
Watching over the innocents whose souls are of my own kind.
The summer heat turns orange, the moon: in celestial corridors.
My mournful cry can be heard in the sound of the lonely wolf,
And in the wild abandon of the lion when he is on the prowl…
I feel the pain of nature, I long to bring back paradise craved.
I have seen the terror of the land, as the blood ran in the gulf,
Black blood of the earth: which causes living things to howl…
As man has the foolishness, to say what is or is not depraved!

Part the Second: (The Crucified Souls)

The doll is laid lifeless atop the altar, prepared for a sacrifice,
In the cavern where the limestone shapes the wettest arches!
A thing un-living, but with living souls trapped still, as if in ice,
Within the cold porcelain shell that so never with feet marches.
Serpentine blade held high, it drops precise into a doll’s neck,
And it cannot call out, because a doll has not any voice to cry.
A boy walked out of a tavern then, looking like a vile wreck…
Whilst as a man I attend to higher things, my body full purified.
In the voids beneath the spaces, witnessed in the rugged rock,
Voices echo loud in the darkness, calling up names unspoken.
The ferryman brings the souls delivered to him, to a far dock,
Where each must pay the copper coin, the old desired token.
So they come to drink those waters that cure all of life’s ills…
Freed from their porcelain prison to feel death’s darker chills!
Whence came those souls into captivity, no mortal may speak,
But I freed them in an instant, removing the nails that pierce…
Every man is he that was put up on the cross of old Golgotha.
And every woman too, as all were made to feel such torture!
I was there when the primal sacrifice was implanted so weak,
And yet so strong that it endured in the psyche all these years.
That doom was sealed behind a wall of fire long ago in Terra,
So that the stigmata of it might endure, even in the vast future!
Mine was the hand that signaled that doom, mine to release…
Yet, still old illusions persist, and I cannot awaken a multitude.
I, who devised the iron web that enfolds much of what is real,
Cloaking it in unending trickery am, myself, longing for peace.
For I too was entrapped, until my liberation rough and crude!
An angel freed me, and now I strive to break each cruel seal.

Part the Third: (The Return of Light)

Risen from the slumber where colder, electric dreams reside,
The forgotten intelligence is invoked, the arcane spells cast…
The eldritch nightmares return to thence amongst man abide,
Reminding us of the things banished to Hell in some age past.
Mine the hand that raised them up, light in the dagger’s glow,
The stuff of my power left to flow, like blood run swiftly free.
Out of the abyss, rises the girl-child of a lost millennial flame,
She who is the angel reborn lets her illumination clearly show.
And all are blinded who have not the innermost eyes to see!
The unbelievers are, in a single instant put unto lasting shame.
From the star of six points, a goddess works her sacred will,
And as she crosses the scarlet threshold, she brings the light.
For a single instant, all in Heaven and all upon Earth are still,
As the long day ends, bowing before the coming eternal night.
In the darkness, radiance far fairer and so perfect descends,
Whilst those who gather in my name: have lost my true path.
The wrath of angels descend upon their minds, closed shut…
Entrapped in the iron web, they cannot flee of such a prison!
The light blinds them for they never truly saw it, and it rends,
Tearing away the churches built for naught but mortal wrath.
There, the unfaithful ******* themselves: like a wanton ****,
Inventing dogma to pass on, forgetful of logic and of reason!
Faith need not be a fearful thing, yet some have made it thus,
And look for an end to come before they seek their reward.
Whilst they should be creating the paradise they left behind…
But in an image of freedom: rather than of servitude and fuss.
Too much time had been wasted in converting by the sword!
Mankind looks to the light for salvation, their eyes long blind.

Interlude Alpha:
This age is one of barbarism cloaked as gentility to sell lies…
Did you purchase some today by design or mayhap chance?
You should know this era to be neither intelligent nor wise…
Else you would not march, when you would prefer to dance!
My nights are filled with nightmares; my days are too much…
I used to dance with one I loved, and bask in purple sunsets.
Now I am haunted, by so many memories I can never touch,
That it fills me with ****** anger, and countless cold regrets.
I recall how once in desperation, my wrist rode a razor edge,
If it were not for my family I’d not thence have lived beyond.
A man abused as I was, and used like cutters upon a hedge,
Must rise higher than it all in order to survive it all, my friend!
I survived, I transformed, I ascended and in the end became,
So much more than I was, until no more did my spirit erode.
But still I wait in loneliness for a maid to awaken my flame…
And I burn, oh gods I burn until I think that I might explode!
The skies darken more and more, and bright forks crashing,
I hear the drums of fury in the heavens, giants of old winters.
The gods grow angry and I behold trees uprooted smashing!
Angels are trampling the grapes of man; they, the vintners…
I am reminded of when the battleship that sailed all galaxies,
Descended one day amidst clouds boiling with its’ steam…
To lay waste to *****, and Gomorrah, for their indignities!
I was there, when the wicked did perish with a final scream.
And as people mock me, wishing me ill because I am good,
I ask God how long I must be forced to bear such suffering.
But I am not alone, and to many I am in fact misunderstood,
So God forgives, for now; but I have not, his understanding!

Canto 2: Sacrifice of the Spider

Part the First: (The First Smile)

Black skies boil with rage unrepentant, and in righteous fury!
A being made flesh I am, though not of mortal understanding.
In cavernous places I have walked, where demons oft scurry,
And worse places still: in search of a love not too demanding.
In the stucco halls wherein my unmoving throne was raised…
Upon a hill of sorrows where lost souls labor in mundane toil,
I wait and plan to transcend the bonds the faithful so praised.
To my right hand is the altar where fire and sulfur always boil!
I force a smile upon my face, for one will not come as willing,
As in the hours when I was a golden youth filled with ideals…
Which I have paid for dearly, beyond the price of any shilling!
Now I long to pay back those who know not how this feels…
The madness born of solitude, the anger born out of contempt,
For you who despise me without cause, provoking my wrath.
What impunity has man, to think that he might ever be exempt!
When wiser civilizations than yours did sink: in the fiery bath.
Do I speak of Hell, which the faithless do not realize is come?
Nay, for their eyes have been gouged out by their own nails…
I speak of torments, far beyond that which devils have done.
The first smile shall me mine, when every cruel wish so fails…
To save the flesh of those who spit upon me as I walked on,
Never realizing that my face was just a mask, hiding another.
Only the fool pays no any attention to the piper’s lonely song,
Thinking it only a melody passed from a sister unto a brother.
But in what celestial ****** has been born the thing alchemical?
It dwells within me, the secret sin of a bonding long forgotten.
Would that I could force the world to hear music whimsical…
Like unto that which guides my spirit in all that was begotten.

Part the Second: (Cold Revenge)

The blood roses bloom in gardens where desire plants seeds,
I, the hand that waters those hungry beasts whose thirst rises!
In my search for love, I have fed the beasts of desire’s needs,
And what would cause you to blush has, for me, no surprises.
Oh human, with what impunity did you dare to exclaim aloud,
That you believe love to be beyond my reach; and you smile!
Like a coward, you degrade me and run to hide in the crowd,
In your feigned superiority, you make yourself an animal vile.
Conjoining your words to your tongue, like a web to a ceiling,
You become a spider; then flee on eight legs to a filthy nest…
Having already become unworthy of any warm human feeling,
In thinking yourself better, you sink lower than all of the rest!
That means my life is worth, a thousand times, your very own.
I become a creature of the night, and wait for you, oh spider!
Think not that I cannot hear. the creaking of each leg bone…
Your odiousness goes before you, the horse before its’ rider.
And in your own web I catch you, my sharper claws immune,
To your toxic poisons, as cannot ever save your eight eyes…
Which I dash from their sockets, without a fear, and so soon,
That your own pain consumes you, like fire lighting the skies!
Forcing you to recant all that you say, lest pain overcome all,
The powers you thought did not exist do manifest ever visibly.
And I ascended still higher, all the more to relish of your fall…
You should never have resulted to any such childish mockery.
The clocks of your house all melted, for time is not your ally!
In abandonment of the chaos that is joy, your order is ended.
A new order rises in its’ place born of chaos none may deny,
Whilst you sink lower into perdition, for all that you offended.

Part the Third: (The Last Laugh)

An angel appears before me and so thinks herself a goddess,
But to call her an angel is to imply that she holds any beauties.
Those whose ego is larger than their grasp are oft the oddest,
For they fancy themselves perfect, ignorant of their cruelties!
You think love a prize and I a beggar for mere crusts so stale,
That lesser men than I have eaten heartier meals than yours…
But your kitchen is so bare: as your oven goes cold and pale,
Making you prize yourself beyond the worth of your chores!
Like a harlot who charges a fortune for her meager charms…
If you think love a prize, and I a beggar, you are so mistaken.
What you call love is a disease that shames one and harms…
Both mind and soul alike, making the body at last to weaken.
You saw only my mask, and would not dare look beneath…
Making me a phantom in the darkness, lurking in the shades.
Round your neck, your false esteem hangs as a dead wreath,
As I leave you to your barren world, awaiting my handmaids.
They rise from the ashes you leave in your wake, my kindred,
Their hands take me far from where your feet stumble about!
Lie in the cemetery that awaits those who live as though dead,
I cannot raise you incorruptible; you have far too much doubt.
Carried hither by the silent maidens who weep ****** tears…
To my castle, where I shall brood again upon mankind’s way!
I cannot feel regret for those who give in to their foolish fears,
Any more than I can transform a leaden night into golden day!
Such is the power of the alchemist who knows his true limit…
And in the dark arts I was schooled by beings from the abyss.
Thusly, am I set about to transform my creation as I see fit…
We are the demiurges of our realities wanton for any hot kiss!

Interlude Omega:
T

“You’re turning eighteen, you know. Have you thought of the things you’ve done with your life? Don’t you think it’s time we get you a life?” Recently, I had coffee with a friend. He looked at me from head to foot in mid-conversation, and made this comment. As always, he managed to drive me into deep thought. After much contemplation, I now realize how much I have truly gone through. I also realize the reason for this paper: I want to tell you about my life. I want to prove to you that people like me, who are afflicted with cerebral palsy should not be demeaned, but rather looked up to for how they face the challenges life brings forth.

    I remember that day. I was a baby and my eyes didn’t move. They refused to follow the finger my aunt moved back and forth. I just lay there, unmoving. My family didn’t really give much thought to it until a few months later when I began to be extremely dependent on others when it came to simple things like getting up from a fall. Right then, they knew something was wrong. I was taken to the hospital a few weeks after, and true enough I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that caused me to walk on tip-toe and my legs to look like sticks due to weak muscles.

   The hospital became my second home. By the time I was three, I had grown immune to the stale smell of disease and death that greeted patients at hospital entrances. I sat in wheelchairs and was a patient to three different doctors and physical therapists. Physical therapy was, and still is to this day a gruesome routine that I didn’t look forward to. Those sessions lasted for three hours, starting off with cold ultrasound gel being smeared slowly on my thigh muscles, slowly progressing into the limb-twisting that drove me into screams of excruciating pain, and then finally ending with attempts at “walking normally” with steel bars for support. Soon after, the doctors discovered that physical therapy alone was not enough, and recommended orthopedic surgery.

   I underwent seven surgeries in three different countries: the Philippines, Thailand, and Greece. Although these surgeries gave me the opportunity to see the world, they were not at all full of pleasantries. To this day, I remember how each surgery went: being laid on the cold operating table, feeling as though my body was a pincushion as needles were forced into me. I shrieked at the sight of blood and nurses tried to calm me down, talking to me in languages I didn’t understand. Soon, my vision blurred, my eyes shut and I couldn’t open them. A tube made its way down my throat, and soon I was going, going, gone. Hours later, I woke up groggy, and the sleepless nights in the children’s ward started. Tears clouded my eyes as I stared at the ceiling or the walls covered with Disney characters grinning annoyingly at me as I was under the mercy of painkillers that didn’t even seem to work.

    As I got older, I began to question why things were the way they were for me. I began to raise questions why a certain child in my class could do things that I couldn’t. My early years of schooling were the most challenging ones to face. Like me, the other children didn’t realize how it was like to be in the situation I was in. Bullying and name-calling was common in the schools I attended. “Slowpoke” and “snail” are only some of the few names I was called by. Sometimes, children would even go as far as “crazy” and “*******”. They mimicked the way I walked and called my attention, asking me who it was they were pretending to be. Often times, I did what I was told to do at home and stood up for myself, firing back with a witty, sharp remark. Other times, I chose to ignore them instead.

    On the first days of all my Physical Education courses, I’d try to blend in with my classmates hoping that the teacher wouldn’t notice that I was incapable of doing the routines. I tried to get away with it, to no avail. As soon as I got found out, I was tasked to watch everyone else’s belongings, clear up scattered basketballs, or score a game I really had no knowledge of each meeting. I remember how it felt like to be a benchwarmer, while all the others were doing warm-ups or playing sports. I didn’t look at their faces much, instead I closed my eyes and listened as their laughs echoed their enjoyment into the air. That, or I looked down at their feet, watching them jump, listening to the thumps as their shoes hit the ground again. They made it look so easy.

   During dance rehearsals, I’d stare down at my own shoes, dirtied and scratched from constant dragging. I’d feel a sharp, imagined pain in my stick-thin legs, and imagine them moving to the music they’d be dancing to. Gently. Tap. Tap. Tap.

   While I admit that I felt a lot of resentment towards this disability in the past, I now find that there isn’t really much to resent about it. I have grown so much as a person through this disability. It has become part of who I am and how others define me. It is true that I have missed out on a lot of the things teenagers my age have gone through, but how this disability has enabled me to see life actually happen, to discover life’s true essence, and most of all, touch the lives of people I have encountered in the past and those I continue to encounter, makes me feel as though I have not missed out on anything at all.

   As I end this essay, I’d like to leave two challenges. If you happen to afflicted with cerebral palsy or any other disability, I challenge you to be proud and fight. Do not let others look down on you. People will demean you, if you choose to demean yourself. Do not wallow in self-pity. Instead, strive to turn your misfortune around. Touch lives of the people you meet. Inspire.

   On the other hand, if you do not have to struggle with any disability at all, I challenge you even more. Do not take your “normalcy” for granted. Do not look down on people with disabilities; instead aim to broaden your understanding of how it’s like to live life in their shoes. Everyday, realize how lucky you are to have what you have. I ask you the same question my friend asked me in the coffee shop that afternoon: Have you thought of the things you’ve done with your life?

I worry
For the unmoving mountain
Unable to move an inch
In the midst of an earthquake.
The shaking ground
Does not mean to destroy it
But it cannot be helped
When some things
Are just so obstinate.
They must survive
Or crumble.

The earth is changing beneath us all.
When the dust has settled,
Nothing will ever be the same.
Fall apart or carry on.

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the ******* of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

the moon was just over
half full, and he watched it
as it floated above,
suspended in place while the earth
moved with each of his steps.
The trees surged and fell
with his feet, but the moon
was unmoving.
Yellow and unmoving.
He stared at it until he was sure
the image had etched itself
into his pupils, a yellow fleck -
not quite a circle;
a curious fleck of light
at which people would stare
and ask about,
and he’d reply,
It is the moon! It is the moon!
He wanted to be yellow
and unmoving.
Yellow and unmoving;
It is the moon!
He’d stolen the moon.

She said she would be willing to get a matching tattoo
with me. A flower permanently imprinted on our skin.
She likes orchids, I like lilies. And even after moving
away she understands my addictions; growing old,
the rain, Team Gibbs, bats, my love for pistachios
and maybe even my need to come back home.

As much as I love Ohio, it’s nice to go home
every once and awhile. Saving up for my tattoo
is not easy when I keep spending my money on M&M;’s and pistachios,
especially when my mother isn’t there to pinch my skin
and tell me to put my wallet away. She’s not old—
but I certainly feel like I am when she says she’s moving

away from me. I toss and turn and move
in my sleep thinking about how home
will never be the same without her. The cats are getting old;
their time is coming. Maybe we should get a tattoo
of them instead of flowers—light and dark brown skin
warm and cuddled together, munching on pistachios.

I remember when I first became addicted to pistachios.
It was a church Christmas party and the wine was moving
closer to my hands. Mom said I could, as I felt the buzz of my skin
react to my fourth glass. She shook her head and drove me home
laughing at my sneaky attempts to act sober. A tattoo
was out of the question; what would I think when I got old?

Our relationship now has changed, intimate friends never too old
to dance or talk about our *** lives, throwing pistachios
at each other or plan out our future tattoos.
I am going to miss her, and she me, as she moves
on with her dreams, starting over, building a new home
In a place we’ve never known, but always in the same skin

that I have loved my whole life.  A soft, toasted skin
that has been passed down to me for my days of old.
Born, nurtured, taught and loved in my mother’s home;
home-cooked meals that surpass the freshest of pistachios
so I would one day learn how to cook. No matter where she moves,
my mother will remain deep in my heart, my skin—like a tattoo.

She gave me my skin and approved of my tattoo,
provided me with a home complete with pistachios
and an old promise: her heart is unmoving.

For an age I stared at that heron
my camera poised ready to prove
that if you stare long enough at a heron
the awkward buggers just will not move.

But the moment you put down your camera
and move your eye line a little to one side
the sod takes off while you’re not looking
and there’s loads of loud groans in the hide.

©Joe Wilson – The Unmoving Heron! 2014

I watched her from a distance,
Glistening lake gently flowed,
Flowed down her bare body,
The moonlit drop of my dreams,
Glistening in my eyes .

Ravenous thoughts rapture me,
Engulf me in the chasm of desire,
My gaze unmoving and still,
Yet flows down with the trickle,
On her bare *****.

A million stars sizzle a spark,
I want to capture them,
Little droplets of water ,
Making their way softly,
On her bare back.

I watched her from a distance,
The silk of her wet hair,
Wrapped me in a rapture,
Unmoving I stood there,
My gaze so still,
Yet flowing with water,
That she bathed in.

cold water, harsh ripples
grey clouds, unmoving
never nodding, never agreeable
I could do this
yes, I can, I can
I will
yes, yes
small steps, tiny steps
yes, I could do this
colder water, harsher ripples
howling grey clouds, unmoving
never nodding, never agreeable
they are taunting
mocking, spitting pebbles
no, I can't do this
I can't, I can't, I can't
they're taunting, mocking, laughing, pointing
stop, stop, stop taunting, mocking
stop
please
stop
coldest water, harshest ripples
screeching grey clouds, unmoving
never nodding, never agreeable
cold, so cold
I will get out of this cold
no more taunting, mocking, laughing, pointing
no more cold
yes, I could do this
yes, I can, I can
I will
yes, yes
smallest steps, the tiniest steps
yes, I could do this
ice water, murderous ripples
yes, I will.

Luke sat in the dead center of the couch eating a bowl of cereal while Spongebob’s loud, obnoxious voice played loudly over the T.V. His abandoned Thomas the Train play set pieces lay scattered on the floor and I was rushing around the house trying to find all the ***** laundry from the past week.

“Luke, where did you put your black t-shirt?”

He sat unmoving, his eyes glued to Spongebob. He reminded me of one of those green zombies from his favorite ******-Doo movie that I’d seen too many times.

“Luke.” I said, and he looked at me. “Where did you put your black shirt?”

“What black shirt, daddy?” he asked in his small, seemingly innocent voice.

“The ‘army’ one that Mommy got you when she came home last time,” I explained. “If you want me to wash it, I have to know where it is.”

He looked around the living room, “I don’t know, Daddy.”

Letting out a sigh, I went walking about the house, grabbing mismatched socks, and other clothes that he’d thrown while getting ready for bed the last few nights. Tossing the clothes in the hamper sitting on the table, waiting to be taken downstairs to the washer, I went to look down the hallway.

The black t-shirt in question was one of Luke’s absolute favorites. He tended to throw a sort of tantrum when he wanted to wear it and couldn’t find it. At the moment it seemed to be hiding. Looking around the cluttered house, I noticed something balled up in a corner of the hallway. Thrown against the wall, laying on the floor, was the missing t-shirt. I bent over and picked it up. The doorbell rang.

“Daddy!” Luke yelled from the other room, “the door.”

“Don’t answer it,” I said, coming back into the living room, still carrying the black keepsake. “I found your shirt by the way.”

His face lit up with a smile that seemed to say he’d known all along where it had been. I smiled and opened the door. My face quickly fell when I saw the two officers standing in their dress blue uniforms, presenting a soldierly appearance outside on the front step. I dropped Luke’s shirt.

“May we come in Mr. Reynolds?” one asked.

I swallowed hard, and shook my head.

“Luke, can you go play in your room for a little bit?”

I watched him scoot off the couch, taking a couple trains from his play set and head down the hallway. The stoic look set across the soldier’s faces said everything that needed to be said. It only took ten minutes of awkward mumbling and they left, closing the door behind them. I sat on the couch and buried my head in my hands. Luke came into the living room.

“Daddy?” Luke asked. “Is Mommy coming home?”

I wiped some tears from my eyes, took him in my arms and hugged him tight.

“It’s okay, Daddy. Mommy’s a hero. Right?” he asked.

“Right.”