Right Through The Heart

 

You always said you'd die for this country.
But you never said you actually would.
You said it with pride, with fire in your voice, like war was a song you couldn’t wait to sing.

I watched you fold your dreams into the pockets of that army uniform, salute our mother like you were coming back, like death would respect your discipline.

But death has no manners.

They brought you home in a box. Wooden. Quiet.
Flag folded like a lie on top.

And they said the words like it was supposed to comfort us, "He died a hero".
But how do I hug a hero who isn’t here?

They didn’t let me see your body.
Said the bullet went right through the heart.
Like your heart wasn’t once the place I ran to when I broke mum’s plates.
Like your heart didn’t beat faster every time you heard her struggle to breathe at night.

I wanted to see the wound.
I needed to. To understand how a single piece of metal
could silence someone so loud, so stubborn, so... alive.

You left your boots under your bed, bro.
Still muddy from the last visit home.
I sit there sometimes, trying to smell what’s left of you.
But even your scent is fading now.

Mum still sets your plate at dinner table.
No one touches it. We just stare at it like you might walk through the door, laughing, saying, "Relax, it was just a prank".

But you’re not coming home, are you?

They gave us medals, salutes. sympathy wrapped in silence.
But they didn’t give us you.

And I know...
I know you believed in what you were fighting for.
But sometimes I wonder if the flag you served will ever remember your name the way I do;  when I whisper it into my pillow at 3 a.m., fighting tears because real men don’t cry, right? You said that.

But I do. Every day.
Because the bullet didn’t just go through your heart, bro.
It went through mine, too.

© amimoh