We were a team once
Back when I first infiltrated your life
One pull of a trigger and I became the enemy
Yet you still said you loved me
Yet we still marched in time
While you yelled out cadences filled with lies

Every fight was a battle field
All I'd see is black smoke and bomb shells
Yes shells
Because we had no more bombs to blow up
So we kept reloading the empty cases
And at night we watched them screech through the horizon down to the broken earth as if it were a firework show
Exempt of colorfilled joy, but with all the empact

"What's the point" you pleaded
Gun to your head
Your form of surrender
But I stopped your purple heart from resting
No man left behind
Even if your dishonorable death would have ended our war

Maybe I just liked the sound of bullets sweeping pass my ear after missing the intended target
Maybe I just liked the sound of heavy brown boots
as I laid on your chest

So I continued to write
Even if my Dear John letters were camouflaged
Recollections of green memories
Exaggerations of tan futures
A future I knew we both couldn't survive
At least not together

Next time I'd write to say the truth
That you could no longer be my "battle buddy"
Too many times had metal surged through my spinal chord
Too many visits to Red Cross

Next time I may not have been able to walk out patched up by grey gauze and crimson hope

They say the military brain washes you
Although you were already like this
Even before the rewiring

They say PTSD is a killer
But you were engulfed by your depression
And yet handed metallic death

They say look at the bright side
Which one
The box scratched with your name
Or the note scratched with mine

Reading the scribbled madness
I know all of two things
that it was because you loved me

And that war like ours doesn't have any winners
Just people who die

And people who killed them