The mountains here are white with dust and bone,
their shadows fall like broken fence posts
over boys with faces much like mine.
We fight through villages of mud and smoke,
rifles slung like shovels
for digging graves no one will visit.

You always said I was better
than what folks called us,
white trash,
as if we were already bagged and set
on the curb. Mama gone to the needle,
Daddy to the bars of a cell,
me to this valley where the sun
burns skin brown,
burns trash to ash.

I think, Granny, that’s what war is:
a great fire built from the poor,
from sons of addicts and drunks,
from us hungry kids who thought
this would give us purpose.
Here, leadership speaks of duty,
but we know better.
Dust drinks us in without distinction,
trash or treasure,
blood or sweat,
we all rot in the same soil.

I miss your kitchen,
shine of foil on the windows,
the peppery smell of your Perique cigarettes,
the hymn you hummed low.
You wanted me to make something of myself,
and here I am,
part of a machine that makes
more nothing into nothing
every day.

I don’t think I’m coming home,
if I do,
act like I never left.