I sat there, huddled, my body cramped like clipped canaries in a wire cage, my desolate skeleton casting the shadows of my doubt. My frail fists shook numbly, worn from countless moments of clutching onto rosary beads with muted desires.

During those breathless hours, my frigid anticipations tore me to pieces, more so than any icy news bulletin. My ears hailed false reports through the generic white noise of wireless transmissions, my mind often mistaking fact for fiction, all information muddled beyond repair.

Even my favorite day­time soaps couldn’t stop reminding me of my son, Ryan, and his impending circumstances, finishing each new broadcast with fresh fantasies of disabled soldiers returning home to recover in modest comfort... or, even worse, cold corpses that were packed into flimsy wooden coffins, all packed over dry ice, en route to American graves.

For us at home, the radio was a specter of war, of the harsh realities concerning a courageous enemy who awaits the peril of our infant army. But for our boots on the ground, the boys growing into men—how they salivated over the luscious, honey tones of Judy Garland or Bette Davis, or the silvery voices of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Why, for them, it proved a warm symbol of hope, love, and homely life that pre­occupied their daydreams.

Little did I know, it was the mindless attentions I gave that radio that sent the unsettling chills spiraling along my spine. God, if only radio broadcasts hadn't been invented, I could burn the evening news with the daily scraps ... Now, I’m penalized with the grand fortune of listening to this little epic of science they call the wireless transmission, the buzz on the airwaves that

sends my sanity scampering.

I watch as a phantom finger wipes away the tears from my wet, wet eyes. Compelled into action, my frail hands wipe away hours of my somber, subdued torture. The tears stain my hands, sting my face, soil my rosary beads. My, my, the sobbing won’t stop­ it jolts my lungs, and the phlegm glued to them shudder once, twice, a third time, a fourth and a fifth­ my sliver of a voice escapes, hacking gauntly, tight as an Achilles’ heel.

This reminds me that I have a voice. Although I struggle to speak, my voice catches, and I cannot help but remember all of the voices that were lost forever during this war. All the voices snapping at me from the radio. All of the voices, crammed into my head, loud, loud, LOUD LIKE THE BULLETS RICOCHETING OFF THE HULL OF MY PLANE, OH DEAR GOD, LOUD LIKE THE TREMBLING SEAT AS IT TWISTS OFF IT’S BASE. LOUD LIKE MY RACING HEART, PUMPING BLOOD AND ADRENALINE THROUGHOUT MY BODY. LOUD LIKE FIRST LIEUTENANT TIMOTHY T. S. JOHNSON, WARNING ME TO FLY LOW, WARNING ME TO TURN RIGHT, WARNING ME OF THE ONCOMING GERMAN

BLITZKRIEG . . .

silence.

utter silence . . . it’s almost peaceful. my brain kicks at my skull, trying to start a rhythm. trying to make sound.

Then I howl, an entirely castrated yawl of frustration and pain and anguish and fear and much, much more. My trepidations are at an end. And then Raven and Blake rush through my door, their surgical white, tasteless coats reflecting so much bright light into my dim abode. But they’re so loud that I cannot but bless their happy hearts, even if their stoic faces won’t smile back at me. It’s almost a game now. To see who will smile first. But what’s worse, is their faces after they restrain me into my bed, Blake holding my seizuring body down with his massive, primitive strength. It hurts me. Raven tries in her own way, to sooth me with a soft, clammy hand over my forehead, brushing my hair. They mirror the face of my son... of my little Ryan.

When they finally leave, it’s as silent as the stares my family gave me when they first came to visit. Silent, like the half­hearted smiles they tried to produce from their own organic hearts. But like me, my family has seen pain, they’ve heard the voices from the radio, the cannon fire from the battlefield. No one is immune to it. Not after seeing something like this.

Now, people must listen to it, too. Not everybody sees war, not everybody reads the papers­ but everybody listens, and they listen to the radio. Most of them wail at it to do it’s

Those idealists who haven’t grown bitter from flipping newspaper pages — in order to skip the gruesome bits — whose fingers aren’t calloused by the rough bite of the paper.

Those are the naïve people who still listen.