Reprinted from Instagram.
He had seen some things. The things you can’t unsee even when you close your eyes. Especially when you close your eyes. The things that rearrange how you see everything else now. These are not the things one talks about. Not with me. Not with you. Not with anyone who wasn’t there to feel what you were programmed not to feel. It’s impossible to talk when there are no words. Somehow that’s a blessing.
It was two tours, or maybe three. It was Iraq, or maybe somewhere else. It was rooftops and towers and third story open windows a hundred meters from the heart you were about to stop. Or maybe not. There will be no stories. They were left there, in the sand, in the rubble. Buried under chunks of concrete and the chassis of burned out trucks. The memories will play only in your head. An endless loop of film with no pause button on the machine. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind.
What he couldn’t say he could sing. Pain flows easier in poetry. It meanders like a river down the side of a hill, the current stronger underneath the surface, tearing up roots and carrying everything along with it. In the silhouetted spotlight, he didn’t so much sing as he confessed. Not for what he had done, but for what he was made to do. In the name of something. He was struggling to recall.
When the song was over, he set his guitar down, picked up his beer and quietly walked off stage. Out of the spotlight and back into the darkness from where he came.