Bursting bullets fly around like buzzards flipping over dead flesh

in the motionless, non-moving, immobile room in its eternal stillness

while sharp shrapnel and shell casing smash to the floor while

he sits in his silent slumping figure like some kind of pill bug perching

and then he looks up and it’s the same still sitting room he was in

three years ago but it’s not but that’s okay but it’s not and he’s walking now.

The rhythm in and out, the feet to move-

a soldier’s boots to tempo, in a groove.

Through sand, through snow, now carpet- differentiating not-

only hearing cracking shot after cracking shot.

His wife and kids, they sit downstairs, oblivious to their loved ones fears-

he sees the door and he has to go;- this place,-it’s not one that he knows.

The tapping of his toe on the train as he holds his ticket is the

only noise as the rest of the passengers pass by and go to their usual

spots and go about their usual lives with no regard to anyone

but their own usuals while he has a transcontinental ticket on a train to a land

that no one has spoken of because they have forgotten it.

They have forgotten him.