Leibowitz Monk

I wear a weaved silver ring I took from rummaging around in my mother’s jewelry box that I never saw her wear. In the same respect, there was no forethought to rummaging around in your memories, in your life experiences.

I hope you didn’t feel like the bomb you hid under your bed for 60 years. Alive with a feeling of overwhelming danger. You were not a lost trinket waiting to be found in a jewelry box. Not a bomb that needed detonating. You were more than the wares of war we rummaged through to feel like we knew you again. I feel like a Leibowitz monk, trying to preserve the knowledge of your existence. But you shouldn’t have to be the subject of a poet’s post, waiting to be post-humus famous to a society that one day might be ready to learn of your life. 

Your departure was not unlike what your generation received from a country we are just now realizing does not make good on the debts of its most virtuous members. 

I fear that my generation of the forgotten few are falling through the cracks of a society that doesn’t want to take their mind off of the perils of war. Highlighting hometown heroes by ignoring all of the post-conflict contributions they make to their communities. First responders on the small town boulevard front lines, battling a war against traumas that become genetic and generational.

There is no flag to be flown or excuse to bemoan to be missing, misappropriated or misplaced in your own country.