Veteran of War: A Poem

I feel like my soul has built up a damn

I don’t know how to break it or change it

I’ve had this deep sense of despair

I can’t shake it and I can’t let it out

As the emotions sit inside me they churn into rage

I feel sadness and anger build up behind my eyes

But nothing will come out

No matter how heartbroken I feel

Nor how many tears build up behind my eyes

The damn will not break

The war I experienced still echoes on this earth

The Iraqis have been poisoned by our weapons

Bombs are once again being dropped on Iraq

And I can’t do a fucking thing about it

I can’t stop all the death

I can’t protect the Iraqis

I can’t take back my going there

I can’t end the suffering

I constantly fear Iraq

I remember it every day

Different events that occurred

Fires, bombs, conversations, fears, and realizations

I will never again be that naïve woman who got on the plane at 22

I will never be able bodied and of sound mind like I was then

I don’t know how to overcome these memories that erupt from my mind

I don’t know how reconcile with feeling like a coward

I didn’t want to go

I would have done almost anything to get out of it

But I didn’t run

I followed my orders

I made friendships and I lost a friend

I felt more fear than I ever felt in my life

And I can’t even express the terror

I can’t express it completely through words, art, or physically

The fear breached all levels of my communication

It sticks with me like tar

I feel like my body and mind have turned against me

They no longer work with me

My body is a vessel that is constantly broken

I am in constant pain all day and all night

There is no ceasing my pain

I can only ebb it

Fatigue weighs on me like Kevlar gear in the hot sun

The simplest of tasks now require more than I have to give

I feel pathetic and incapable

I have a soul that is independent

Trapped in a body

And controlled by a mind