14.03.05 NATHAN, Fallujah
Forrest Koch
To jump at shadows.
To carry a dim flashlight
That found the child
Crammed behind a refrigerator
Three days after watching
Iraqi soldiers shoot her mother and father.
Drying tears, he told her
How he once scraped his dead sister’s
Body from the debris
Of their family sedan.
He told her he knew what she meant
When she said she couldn’t live without them.
That night he wrongly imagined himself invincible.
He doesn’t sleep anymore.
Just a sleeping position and suspicious sounds.
A barking dog.
Showering gun fire.
He doesn’t jump at shadows anymore
He simply stops to admire
Those that move with the grace of trees.