I have bad dreams.
They come, unbidden, into my room at night.
They pass through the maze of my alcoholic daze;
They take me back,
Back to a dusty desert road;
Our convoy is headed towards Mosul.
But we never make it there:
The Humvee is upended by an eardrum shattering blast.
I am falling.
I see you are screaming but there is no sound..
Blackness.
I died three times on the medivac copter
But the Corpsman kept bringing me back.
I have bad dreams
In them I see the faces of the dead,
They are the faces of my friends;
My friends, for whom I mourn
Until this heart becomes a stone.
A tale about post traumatic stress disorder, part of the price paid by soldiers in the cause of freedom. These are the wounds you do not see.