Bloodless
In the world’s history of war, our stories
do not appear. Our casualties go uncounted,
if not entirely unnoticed. No shot rings
out, no missile strikes, no bomb drops
nor building falls, and no, no blood flows.
Yet damage reigns when cruel
words conquer and occupy the mind,
when the violence in a verb volleys into the
heart and there explodes and burns to
twist and melt one’s being.
Then
after all the hurting,
memory returns to maim
and to remind that
hope can be killed
again again and again,
each time it, eternal, attempts to spring.
The damage done lives on.
Where is our hospital?
Where are the medals for bearing,
the honor for enduring
the pain
the scars
the crippling caused
by wounds invisible as wind,
silent as a growing branch,
as deeply, thickly veiled as eggs
within the womb, and as real
as shrapnel?