THE LONG WAR
it’s winter orit’s the last day of winterand they’re calling for a second warit’s winterit’s the second day of the new decadethey’re callingyou have only just acceptedwhat happened to your father’s fatherwho died long before you were bornleft the men you are made fromto cry into bottles of Boone’s Farmtheir hands blue andyou imagine a world where your fatherwasn’t your father, was the man he wantedto be which was the man his father waseven drunker, and meanbut for good reason, the war hard etchedhe could smell the blood from men’s scalpsit’s winter orthe last day of winter and you have been hurting yourselfbecause you are just a scared little boyyou are hurting yourself because you are youthe boys in gym class spit in between swipeswith their hockey sticksspit lands on your shinbone and that feelingwill stay with you for the rest of your lifethe hot of someone’s insides spilled onto youthe spitting boys talk about the warsalivate over the day they’ll enlisthow many men they’ll kill with their bare handshow many women will want to fuck themand you figure you could join the armybut you remember how you arehow the sight of your own skinned kneemakes you dizzy, makes you have to wrenchyour eyes so you can stay steady in spite of the warm bloodyou’re in junior high and these boyswon’t join the war because in five years they’llbe dead or college boundthere is no in betweenit’s the second day of the new decadeand the war has carried on for two thirds of your lifeit’s been so constant that you barely thinkabout it anymore, you don’t weepover the hundreds of thousands of bodiesinstead you get stoned and watch a documentaryabout the Vietnam war and cry and cry and cryand beg someone to explain how that happenedlike you didn’t see it happenlike it wasn’t happening since the yearyou were born, but came out barely aliveit’s the new decade and you rememberprotesting the war, you remember caring at some pointnow you’re preoccupied with bodiesyou’re exchanging nudes on scruffyou’re jerking off talking to this military guywho’s on the DL and looking for some holehe keeps asking you what you’re intoare you into this? this? how about this?he says you seem like just what he’s coming from the mouth of a man who owns a rifleissued by the united states governmenta man too scared to admit he’s queerso you block him, hope he doesn’t sell your nudesand roll your underwear back upit feels time to tune outit feels terrible to look past the painful magnifyingglass of your own lifeyour grandfather killed people in a different centuryon a different continent, in a different climatehe smelled the blood until he diedhe died and left behind boys who couldn’tfeel things anymore, he diedand could not have anticipated youyou belly down on the floorturned on thinking about spitbut stopping to imagineit’s winter and you stopconsider the warm bodies far awayspitting in the dirt of another continent, too afraid not to
