Reflections, deployment experiences, mindset, and the unpolished truth between poems.
There is something strange about finding beauty in a place designed for destruction. I started carrying a notebook in my left breast pocket — the side closest to the heart. Not for sentimental reasons. Just habit. But it became something else.
I've been asked where I'm from so many times that I've developed three different answers depending on how much time the person has. The short version. The medium version. And the truth.
It happened at a gas station. Of all places. I was filling up the tank and a car backfired two lanes over and I was suddenly not at a gas station anymore. I was somewhere else entirely. And then I was back. And I sat in my car for twenty minutes.
A therapist once told me to journal. I tried. Three pages in I realized I was editing myself — softening the edges, explaining the feelings instead of just feeling them. Poetry doesn't let you do that. A poem is a trap door. You fall through it before you realize you've moved.
Nobody tells you that loving someone from 6,000 miles away requires a different kind of courage. The courage to stay present in a relationship you can only access through a screen. The courage to trust what you cannot touch.
She used to say: 'Onipa na ohia onipa.' A person needs people. I spent years trying to disprove this. Deployed. Isolated. Self-sufficient to the point of damage. She was right. She was always right.