Debris

Occasionally, some disgruntled local would chuck a piece of masonry or rebar over the wall into the green zone. Most of the blocks to the north were bombed out. Endless debris. We started issuing helmets to the civilian contractors after one got clobbered by half a brick while he was out jogging too close to the shit.

In time, I found out that Eleni carved little figurines out of those chunks. She wanted to make one for me. Why? I didn’t want one, but I didn’t say no. At that point we had three, maybe four translators left inside the walls. She was the best of them, and I didn’t want to piss her off.

When I met her, she was shouting over the engine noise of this rust bucket Toyota that had pulled up to the north checkpoint. Calm, because if you panic at someone they’re usually going to panic right back. She was shouting without panicking, telling the man to put his vehicle in reverse and return to the main road or those soldiers in the towers were going to shoot him.

Any rev of his engine, sudden acceleration in either direction, boom, done. We would have shot him. He didn’t, though. She got through to him. He put it in reverse and idled away.

She carved a Saracen warrior for me with a sharp little beard and a scimitar sword on his belt. I still didn’t want it, but it was for me.

Me, who doesn’t think about the 30mm round I shot through another Toyota at another checkpoint. Me, who doesn’t think about the one that exploded in the courtyard.

Me, who thinks about that damn figurine, and all the other ones she made, and what became of them after the end.

“Expired”

She had tunnel vision to an outside dream
Crimson passions spawning duplicitous schemes

She saw my life
ripe for the taking

I thought she gave me a dose
of some experimental drug
prescribed off-label
by something in a parallel universe
where everything had worked out for us
I left it in the medicine cabinet
beyond the lifespan of forgiveness
until I felt safe throwing it out

The act of cleaning gives me time to consider
that she wanted my life
not to take
but to have
or to trade
a fair dream in any universe
alas, it’s faded
expired