Year One

You dragged the mattress into the living room, citing
how insomnia has crept into every Sunday
of your life and how white noise somehow
soothes the beasts in your head
to rest, just enough to sleep.

At first I felt internally resistant, struggling
with lights flashing in pixilated repetition
around the dark room, each sound
from the television a knife
running along my nerves.

I felt your body crawl over mine, listened as you
placed “We Were Soldiers” into the tray of the player,
and then settle down beside me again.
I lay there still resisting the noise,
but as it continued, I softened.

We watched the first major conflict in the Vietnam war
and sorrow rolled down my cheeks silently
as young men took their deaths so afraid
and unsure, knowing this was once my father
in Vietnam and your father in Korea.

So there we lay on our anniversary, bodies locked
together in something deeper than we could
have imagined a year ago, I could have never
been born pounded through me as you
wiped tears and allowed my heart
to break, understanding
the repercussions
of war torn
childhoods.

Aleathia Drehmer is the editor of a print micro-zine called Durable Goods and Zygote in my Coffee.  She has had two small collections of poetry published at Kendra Steiner Editions called Thickets of Mayapple and Circles.  Her forthcoming full collection called Empty Spaces will be in a book shared with Dan Provost published by Tainted Coffee Press.  Her previously published work can be viewed here: www.myabdication.blogspot.com