The War Came Home

I thought I left it in the dust, on a runway far away, thought the engines took me home, thought the years would make it fade. But it followed in my suitcase, it was folded in my clothes, it learned the sound of quiet rooms, it slept where no one knows. It hid inside my shoulders, it lived behind my eyes, it sat with me at dinner wearing silence as disguise. Everybody saw a man who made it back alive, but nobody saw the war that came home with me inside. I carried what nobody saw. I buried what nobody knew. I came home from the battlefield... But the battlefield came too. The war came home, But it didn't wear a name. It looked like sleepless nights, It sounded just like shame. It lived in every sudden sound, Every door closed wrong. I left the battlefield behind, But the battlefield held on. It showed up in my temper, then vanished into guilt. It cracked the walls of every house I tried so hard to build. It made love feel like danger, made peace feel like a trap. Made my body scan the room for a threat that wasn't back. I prayed until the morning, I begged to be made whole, but healing moves through places where language cannot go. And decades after fire, after dust and blood and stone, I finally had to face it: the war had followed home. But what came home can be named. What is named can meet the light. What meets the light can loosen Its grip upon the night. I am not only damage. I am not only pain. I am the man who kept on breathing When the dead still knew my name. The war came home, But it will not have my soul. It may live inside my memory, But it does not own control. I can grieve what I carried. I can bless what survived. I can walk with wounded vision And still come back to life. I thought I left it over there, but it followed me alone. I carried it through every silence, every place I called my home. But now I'm learning how to heal, learning what the scars can say. The war came home with me, but it does not get to stay. The war came home, But it will not have my soul. It may live inside my memory, But it does not own control. I can grieve what I carried. I can bless what survived. I can walk with wounded vision And still come back to life.