my
brain was left back in the war, the burial
of civilian-normality, how my amygdala
kicks out the ladders in my head, falling
decades, erasing exes, fought for my nation
and now, hibernation, isolation, chairs
stacked in front of my bedroom door when
I don’t sleep at night, the end of the world
in my head, the tingling headaches in my
head, my head in my head, the dead that
lullaby me every night, stormed around
my bed, the hole in my head, how I smell
corpse and I’m medical now, delved into
Detroit, elated when the night is slow,
the moon is shrunk, smoking out in
the parking lot, a doe tiptoeing across
the wet asphalt, a northern red oak’s
branches waltzing behind it, and how
oak is so often used for caskets, how
beautiful they look only when empty.
