Wartime, Bosnia

1. Wife

You leave in the morning.
Sometimes I run after you
when the house is empty
but for the scent of your soap,
up, down on the street.
When I catch you
I smell gunpowder.
Sometimes I turn back.
Sometimes I press your palm
to my breast.
I want to tell you we all
have a heartbeat but
my mouth is stale and silent.
I forget you, my husband,
remember cold nights.
Gunshots ringing.
The silence in between.
Howling wind.
Starkness.
You come home nights
hardened and grim.
No quiet, but gruffness.
Sometimes I burn for kisses.
I wish for your absence
more than you know -
The calm at 3:00 am.
The phone call.
Your body crumpled
on the pavement.



2. Husband

War is to burn.
My feet grow lost
in boots each day,
in soreness each night.
The distance I walk in my dreams
is daytime again and again.
I have lost track
of my sweat.
I am skeletal
in my skin.
Sometimes I wake up screaming.
Sometimes, smiling.
And then the morning comes.
Laces pulled taut.
Boot prints in the yard.
A step onto the street,
and I am hectic,
stumbling,
a stranger’s child
reaping terror in the light,
tongue tracing teeth to
keep track of the
sharpness that lives
inside my body.

I lose teeth in children’s flesh
the way one loses coins
from a pocket.
They leave holes gaping
raw in my gums.
I forget sometimes
that bullets are like teeth –
Let too many fall and it grows
hard to eat.