ENDLESS SUICIDE NOTE

Three days ago it was two days since his memorial and six since he was killed.  We sit around the fire holding near beers and s’mores.  We spoke  about him in the present tense.  ”He wants to be buried in Alaska by the house he grew up in” she says.  ”He talks about his son all the time” he says.  The fire dies slowly.  When we were told about his death and how the body formerly known as a person was being transfered from the COP to a FOB it was all past tense.  When we talk about him now it’s all past tense.  We talk about his son’s SGLI benefits and whether they’ll be enough (they won’t).  At the memorial his Soldiers spoke of his leadership.  Most people cry.  They took roll.  They call his name. They call his name.  They call.  His full.  Name.

It’s over now. 

soldierporn:

Army Captain James D. Nehl. 9 NOV 2012.

Died in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, from small arms fire while on patrol during combat operations.  He was assigned to 2^nd Battalion, 16^th Infantry Regiment, 4^th Brigade Combat Team, 1^st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan. 

:(

is in her mid fifties. I see her when walk out to the shitters. Every move weighs heavy with significance. Her arms are crossed over her ACU patterned IBA, her eyes glazed over. No one walks very quickly. Her male counterpart speaks with a couple of NCOs. Their voices hushed as if the subject of their conversation might hear them. He won’t. The civilian’s tear stained eyes stare into nothingness. I wonder if she watched them put him in a body bag or when the pieces of him were place in a hazardous waste bag.

I take an autopilot piss and think about my life. I think about his life. I don’t know much about him. I think I heard something about a new wife. I don’t want to fucking think about this. I breeze back inside, fly down. Civilian makes eye contact. She’s the right age to have a son as young as he was. She’s the right age to have a son as young as I am. Where did she go when she heard the explosion? Did the gunshots scare her? Does she know her way around a weapon? She’s probably prior service. Does she know the cycle operation for my semiautomatic, magazine fed, recoil-operation, double-action weapon? Did she ever go to a promotion board? She turns her head and I feel her watching me until I turn an out of sight corner. I have an overwhelming urge to hug her. 

But I don’t, obviously. Instead I lay on my bed, sweaty clothes cold against my skin. I listen to the Fugees trying hard not to think about her. I try hard not to think about him, not yet, at least. Not for a while. 

I don’t write about it for a while. I do write about it, though. It really does help. When I finish I don’t push publish. Instead I queue it until such a time when I won’t have internet anyway. This is all so weird. 

So this is war.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?


Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.