He keeps the pulpy image lying in his back pocket

Torn apart from derelict and friction

for we don’t love

Love the country

Love the duty

but you can’t love him

because there isn’t enough to go around

You can watch as fellow cadets kiss and grip their girls

enveloped with warm devotion and 

pre-emptive goodbyes

but you have to save it

to tuck in your pocket

When others ask who has your eye

He becomes a blonde with a crooked smile

a girl that laughs like the the air is breaking out from her maw

It's a lie so poorly stitched together 

that attention is turned back towards the crafter 

and not the question

Because a gay soldier is a paradox

Soldiers learn to fight

while the queer kid taught himself at nine

Face wet and arms bruised 

He learned to run in worse conditions

*

*

*

They can’t have you in the military

because recognition accompanies every booted step

A recognition of the hidden agony a mother exhibits at a border wall

after being told to walk back a hundred miles 

she just traces her steps in the hot sand

You can’t give a glance of reassurance for the tiny boy

sitting on

American rubble

The scattered bricks 

not American born 

but American left

because you Love the country

        Love the duty

You just can’t tell them who’s waiting for you back home