PTSD

After she shakes the shadows from her night sweats
And dries the quivering drips
She makes breakfast.
One bowl of cereal, one cup of coffee French pressed
Scrubbing clean the filter like the barrel of her M16
And oatmeal for the little man,
Sometimes appreciative, sometimes not.
She sets aside the ingredients,
Handle, barrel, trigger and clip
And paints her face for war before leaving for work.
 
I can tell the tale in her manner,
My brother served others overseas and came back half.
Strings of familiarity, the man I knew with a glitch
conducive to daytime revelry and dreams of suicide.
People call it PTSD like it’s a disease and sometimes I wonder,
What if it isn’t chemical imbalance, a combat zone cold
airborne in blood spatter
And cured by sheer dopamine,
But a healthy reaction to the beast at the bottom of everything.
Horned and wild, chaos incarnate feeding on its own flesh,
Or so I’ve heard.
 
She gives daily sermons,
Projects her sorrows like slides
And writes her memoirs in imperfect language
And in the interim between clauses , ”lunatic” comes on whispered breath
From her audience.
I put in my good honest time to ignore it.
I do not go knocking on cellar doors,
Or looking for my lost possessions at the bottoms of wells.
The hint lingers enough to drown it in whiskey
Without her coming around and speaking in tongues.
I am given to my fantasies and I will stay there.
I have a right to my illusions,
To defame her madness and to cry hallelujah.
I too am guilty, ignorant, and free.