Reporting for Duty

Loosing a son to war breaks your heart. It takes away a part of you.

Every Memorial Day, Ruth drives south before dawn,
past fields of patchy fog and old campaign signs,
to the white-stoned hill where silence keeps formation.

She brings yellow roses.
She brings the same memories.

“I still wait for your footsteps home.” The sting of that still hurts her heart.

Her son Daniel was nineteen when the convoy was attacked.
Closing her eyes she still sees the officer at the door folding and unfolding his hat,
as if grief could be pressed into something smaller.

After that, there was no more hope in setting an extra plate at supper.
She stopped singing while she cooked,
stopped sleeping through thunderstorms.

Loved ones said time would soften it.
Time only taught her how to carry it quietly.

At the cemetery, flags seem to tremble in the wind.
They remind her of brave hands shaking as they took their last breath.
Children weave between marble rows,
not understanding how young the dead remain.

Ruth kneels beside Danny’s grave,
and traces his name with two careful fingers.
She tells him about the leaking roof,
about the stray cat she finally fed,
about how his little sister became taller than her.

That she is proud of him.

Then the bugle sounds—thin, aching, final.

“I still wait for your footsteps home.” Something her heart will never stop saying.

On the drive back, dusk gathers over the highway.
The roses are gone.
The silence rides beside her again.

But for one brief day,
love has somewhere to report for duty.