A modified, blue 1995 Ford Ranger,
Their version of an ambulance,
Arrives through the concertina wire gate
In the secluded, mountainous, springtime base
In south east Afghanistan.
The Afghan National Army soldiers
Urgently swing the makeshift doors open
They carry out two occupied stretchers
both covered with blue medical sheets
and they gently lay them down.
One of them slowly pulls away the cloth.
The tears of grown men begin to flow
An Afghan soldier screams,
“AHMED!”
Ahmed’s lifeless eyes tilts from facing the sky
To glaring straight at me.
The side of his head I couldn’t see from my angle
is missing.
Mutilated flesh hangs by a bloodied thread of sinew
a heaping bowl of brain tissue rests
under where his skull used to be.
“End dream!” screams the alarm clock.
Is it time for school or work?
Either way
I leap out of bed as my heart races, as I do, from this
Haunting, unforgettable, unavoidable, memory.