My mornings start too slow
The shots of my alarm clock wake me long after my eyes are open
The cold sweat of unease unlocks my bedroom door
I brace myself for another day

Each clang of the morning orchestra heightens my heart beat
Please don’t let them hear me, it’s only a month i’ve been back
But each time my foot pads along the squeaky floorboards
I am no longer unheard, I am unsafe

Out in the open, in my living room, I am unguarded by soft sunrise lighting and
the foreign furniture
I haven’t seen my home in a year but I know that I sat on this couch once
But still, the humidity of a jungle is where my head feels okay

I am long gone from the real world
At night I breathe so loudly the universe can hear my existence
I am lost in the whirlwind of war, swept underneath the tidal waves of hot, sticky, manly air and dead bodies along the road. 

I am accustomed to the shakes and rattles of earth underneath my fatigued body from nearby explosives
I have seen my best friends die and I am un phased by the decibels in which my dead commander would sing
but I still wait for the beautiful silence of each night time

My evenings are slower, the arthritis stricken sun is creeping behind the horizon
When the sky turns black I sit and wait
Crouching behind my western mask
I am new to this world

Reborn but revisiting my past, I can’t see who I was before the war
I’m a structure of each metallic shard flying past my head, each sickly sweet night filled with humid air and each scream replaying in my banged up brain.
Unaware of each passing hour, i wait for the crickets to chirp louder

I remind myself of memories and i’ll trace my fingers across a globe
reconnecting myself with the bittersweet touch of long vietnamese grass, the scent of blood,  the taste of dripping sweat and the sound of deathly screams
but a spherical map is no substitute for mother earth; i have to experience her directly