71

The good soldier swears to kill. Fire the cannon, mount the barricade, lock and load. Smell your brother’s blood on your shirt. Wipe your sister’s brains off your face. Die, if you have to, so they’ll live. Kill to keep your people alive, live to kill some more.

Odysseus had twenty years to shed his battle skin. My grandfather left the battlefield in France and rode home in a ship that crawled across the ocean slowly so he could catch his breath. I get on a plane in hell and get off, hours later, at home. I try to ignore Death, but she’s got her arm around my waist, waiting to poison everything I touch.

I wash and wash trying to get rid of the sand. Every grain is a memory. I scrub my skin until it bleeds, but it’s not enough. The named winds of the desert blow under my skin. I close my eyes and I hear them.

Those winds blow sand across the ocean, turning into hurricanes, tornados, blizzards. The storms crash into me when I’m asleep. I wake, screaming, again. And again. And again.

The worst of it is seeing the sand sweep across the deep sea-blue of my daughter’s eyes.