PTSD
It’s a scene people in my line of work are too familiar with

Two in the morning

Cigarette in hand

Blood on his knuckles

He’s been swinging at shadows again

Whiskey on his breath

I’m talking him down again

I’m trying to remind him that Afghanistan is just an outline on a map now

That he is in Southern California

And no longer in the desert that killed half of his adopted brothers

I try to swallow my guilt

Even though I have heard all of the stories

And he and I have the exact same basic training

I have no idea what he’s been though

I try to keep it humourous

I remind him that

Yes, California has a gang problem

But the Bloods and the Crips are not known for making homemade explosives

Not known for treating children like street corners

And rigging them with IEDs

That’s probably not funny to any of you

But’s that’s okay

Because even though he laughs
we both know it's empty gallows humor

Because there’s nothing funny about a grown man

Scared to death of the monsters under his bed




He takes a drag from his cigarette

Takes a pull from his bottle

Normally I would stop him

But I can tell that tonight

It might be the only thing holding him together

He says do you remember the things they taught us

Like how Opha Mae Johnson

Was the first female to join the Marine corps in 1912

Or how in 1918 we gave birth to the concept of Marine Corps aviation
The proper way to place a tourniquet is as far from the heart And as close to the missing limb as possible

If one of your brothers takes a round to the chest

The proper way to treat it is to take a layer of gauze large enough to cover the wound

Tape down three sides and monitor your patient for shock and tension pneumothorax

If they present with tension pneumothorax

You take the end of a hypodermic needle

Puncture between the second and third rib

allowing air to escape from the pleural cavity

And allowing your casualty's lungs to expand

When one of your brothers is thinking about killing himself

He will act irrationally

He will make jokes about his own demise

His performance at work will be affected And with shaking hands

He will begin to give away things that you once thought meant something to him

What they never taught us were the things that mattered

They never taught us how to apply a tourniquet To the bleeding stump of your our sanity

Or what to do when no matter how many sharp objects I have punctured my chest with

my lungs just don’t seem capable of expanding anymore

Or what to do

When the shaking hands Are now my own




The only thing that puts me to bed anymore is a bottle of whiskey and a fist fight

And that’s because

The last time I slept soundly

It was in a hole I dug with my bare hands

7000 miles from home

The last time

My bed felt comfortable

It was in the middle of a war zone




He takes a drag from his now spent cigarette

Takes a pull from his now empty bottle of whiskey

He reaches for his wallet

Shows me a picture of his pregnant wife

He says

Do you know why I’m glad I’m having a baby

I feel like If I can bring a child

Into this world

Then maybe

I can give back a little bit of the innocence that was stolen from me

I was 19 and naive

When they handed me a rifle And sent me off to war

And I don’t think I’m ever going to get that back

You see Before I left I knew

No matter what they held I could always outrun my fears

No matter what my nightmares contained

I would always wake up

But somewhere

Between the first time

My truck hit an IED

And the night

We had to send Kyle home in a body bag

Because someone fell asleep on post

My nightmares They grew legs

And started chasing after me

And now

My lungs Are on the verge of collapse

From running dead sprint Through a marathon race

I just don’t seem capable of finding the finish line to

I don’t know If I’m ever gonna wake up

And the irony of that

Is I haven’t slept in three days





The images Just keep playing themselves across my vision

As if the back of my skull Were a movie projector

I can smell the blood

And I can taste the death

I keep hearing the sound a throat makes

When all of its vocal cords have been cut

I keep seeing the way Jonesy’s face looked

Moments before a bullet

Removed the top half of his skull And drained

Every dream he’d ever had

Out onto the dirt street of some shit hole city we couldn’t even tell you the name of

We couldn’t even tell you why we were there

And I know

The burden of doing exactly as we are told

Is one us warriors are taught to carry at a young age

But my shoulders are tired

I keep trying to remind myself that I am a warrior

That I am trained to kill

And willing to die for the things that I believe in

And If I just keep doing exactly as I have been taught

Then maybe

Someday this will all go away

But

The problem with that is

That in between my nightmares

My favorites dreams

Are the ones where my friends

Are still alive