Volume II — Wars & Devotions

Symbiosis

Your demons are quiet, and mine like to sing; Together we're perfect, a beautiful thing.

Unflinching

I told you that the birds speak Latin hexes, That shadows eat the hours from the clocks. You did not call for priests or check my reflexes, You simply nodded and doublechecked the locks.

Your Presence

The floor disappears. The ceiling melts down like wax. Gravity's a joke. But your hand is in my hand. And so I do not float off.

The Locket's Weight

Old brass, tarnished dark, Holds what the world forgets. My heart beats for thine.

I Know

Yes, my love. I know what you are. I know what you've done. Your hands have stopped hearts I've counted the confessions in the spaces between your breaths at night. Do you think this makes me love you less? Foolish man. Beautiful, foolish, deadly man. I am not afraid of killers. I have been killed a thousand times by softer things than you: by kind psychiatrists with their white pills, by family who called my truth "sickness," by a world that murders girls like me with indifference. But you you kill with purpose You kill to protect You killed so you could come home to me (though you didn't know it then) Your body count does not appall me, darling. It awes me. You have taken life and somehow still can give it give it to me in the way you touch my face like I am holy, like your stained hands have finally found something worth keeping alive.

For Ezra

Your son. The boy with your eyes and someone else's laugh. I will never be his mother—this I know with the peculiar clarity that comes between the medications and the voices. But I can love him sideways, in the margins, in the way broken things love other fragile creatures. He is proof that you can make beautiful things, Ryan. That your hands, which have broken so much, also built a person. A small person with questions and needs and a father who tries so hard it makes my chest hurt. I promise to be kind to him. I promise not to scare him with my strangeness (or at least, not too much). I promise to love you harder because you love him first. This is right. This is good. Your heart is large enough for both your son and your mad girl. I'll take whatever space is left. As each visit comes I learn to love the echo of you in small form

A Prayer

Grant me courage to cradle thy claws of fear, Let my whispers be balm upon thy silent screams; May our souls entwine beyond decay and death, Till love outlasts the fiercest war split dreams.

Love

My love is not the pink of pleasant things, Nor silly crimson hearts upon the sleeve. It is the rust that dried blood always brings, The deep, dark hue that memories interweave.

Stitches

Boots by the bedside, a quiet war in his chest I stitch moon to him.

Knife

Come to the window, love; the clocks are hungry. They gnaw the silver hours into crumbs. Take my small knife; I will mend your edges. You smell of rain-blessed iron and an old country I hum to chase away the clicking drums. Come to the window, love; the clocks are hungry. Your laugh is a detonated tin, a bright thing funny, it leaves glass beads of light where sorrow hums. Take my small knife; I will mend your edges. I braid the dark into a braid for your neck my honey, and count the tiny stars that live in your thumbs. Come to the window, love; the clocks are hungry. If nightmares scratch the pane, I will set honey, I will trade my last clean thread for silence and thumbs. Take my small knife; I will mend your edges. Stay with me, my chest is a harbor for your flung body. Come to the window, love; the clocks are hungry. Take my small knife; I will mend your edges.

My Lover

There once was a marine, weathered and old, whose medals looked like petals… lusterless gold. He came home with a hum, I stitched him with rum, and he slept in my pockets all crooked and bold.

Warrior

I keep thy quieted wars within the hollow of my palms, and turn each jagged memory into a cradle that calms. When thunder remembers where thy footsteps have been played, I sew a lullaby from rust and lace to soften the blade. If ever thou shouldst wander into sleepless, hungry nights, return to my small harbor where madness knows thy rights.

Moon

You keep the moon in your pockets and call it debt. Boots like small forts march quiet on the floor. You keep the moon in your pockets and call it debt I've sewn my name in the hem where the wounds have met; I sing to the dents when the streetlight is sore. You keep the moon in your pockets and call it debt.

Epitaph (for his lost sleep)

Here sleeps a soldier who traded dreams for duty sleep softened by a lover who mends the bruised night

Killer

Fair-haired darling, thou art my doom Yea, killer in gentlest of bloom Aflame with solace in darkest sky Nurturing death with each lullaby.

My Father Kept Me Safe

Hush, little ghost, the night's not deep, (Though the shadows here do creep). A Marine once walked the street outside, His boots were loud, his heart… quiet, wide. He didn't know your name, my dear, Just that you were a spark, severe, A flicker in the bomb's bright flare, A child with haunted, hollow stare. He stayed his men, held fast the line, While bullets sang a deadly whine. "Safe as houses," he'd mutter low, Though all the houses here were broken… broken… Sleep, Ryan. Guard my dreams again, With your rifle, your quiet, steady hand.

Home

You came home, Ryan. Through two tours, through IEDs and ambushes, through everything that tried to keep you you came home. And now home is here, with me, and you hold this position with the same ferocity you held any firebase. Semper Fidelis, my love. Always faithful. You to the Corps. The Corps to you. And now, impossibly, you to me.

Desert Dust

Desert dust whispers Marine heart in cracked armor, Keeps my fears at bay.

Ezra Doll

Ezra Bright-eyed blossom Healing, teaching, clinging A new dawn from battle's ruin Light

Sociopath

A gentle wolf in soldier's skin His heart beats ice, yet warms my sin

Devotion

My tired Marine, you are my single truth Your shield protects this fractured rose In every wrinkle, I find youth My tired Marine, you are my single truth Though war has stolen years of ruth Each sigh declares what love bestows. My tired Marine, you are my single truth, Your shield protects this fractured rose.

The InBetween

You are forty. I am twenty. The world has mathematics about this, equations of appropriateness that we do not solve correctly. But here is what they do not know: You do not want me for my youth you want me for my darkness, for the way I understand your nightmares, for the fact that I don't flinch when you wake up swinging. And I do not want you despite your age I want you because of it, because you are tired enough to be honest, broken enough to be real, old enough to know that perfect doesn't exist and to love me anyway. We are not May December, darling. We are midnight to midnight, darkness recognizing its own reflection. Age is just another number, like your kill count, like my diagnoses, like the years between us irrelevant to anyone actually paying attention.

Ryan and Varya

Ryan fought in fiery Iraq Returned with scars we dare not track. Yet Varvara finds in every line A tale more precious than aged wine.

For Always

By ash and bone, by green eyed grace, By scars that map a fallen place, By Ezra's laugh, by midnight fears, By all the blood, the sweat, the years I bind you not with chains or gold, But with this truth, more sharp than cold: You are not broken. You are bent. You are not lost. You are sent. You are not tired. You are true. And I am the wound that heals you. So rest, my warrior. Lay down your gun. The war is done. The war is won. (We won.) (Together.) (Always.)

—V.
(Your Varvara. Your marrow doll. Your home.)