Finger Painting In Blood
Somewhere in the darkness
A former soldier, if such a thing
Woke to glacier sweat sheets around him
A slight girl pressed against his bedside--
Bleached body of a nut brown orphan
Buried under layered grimy dirt
She murmured her sobs in a tongue
That came from a well in her throat,
Opening softly her leathered mouth
Then she, with desert baby hands,
Picked the flesh off the soldier’s ribs;
He cried for what he could not give
Yet she was starving, always would be,
Wide-eyed, she returned swollen to beg
A young veteran’s conscience for more
His wife knew not of the nightly feast
Until two years, her feet on his grave
Scrawled last words burrowing in her lapel
Flowers she would place on his fresh dirt
Would wither in three days and blow up
In the sky, exhaling war’s sorrows