Home From The War

The year I was born, surprise child,
flown into my mother's, as yet, barren belly,
my cousin marched off to war.

I expanded slowly to fit
the eight year old space
my cousin had left in our house.

When I turned four, he returned,
shrapnel wound to the head, 
skin taut to tired body.

Nightly, he paced the house,
stared at us with a stranger's eyes,
yet, each day, took my hand,
walked me to slurp coke while he flirted
with the dark-eyed counter girl who
tossed her hair like a movie queen.

So handsome-by age eight I loved him.
 He would dally till I grew,
then marry me, I reasoned, would look
at me the way he looked at the trampy
girls who trailed him now like horseflies.

We lived in a bubble, waiting.
His body was back, something inside was still gone.
We hoped for his full return, but a drunk driver 
finished what the war never could.



Pris Campbell
©2004

Photograph: Archives. Taken on leave
in New York before the War.

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