the untamed scent of woman on my skin and the way my heart beats to the syllables of her name.  the angelic (almost) way i claimed you as a child does a toy he has kept, but never played with, as soon as it falls into the hands of another.

+

you said 'she's nothing like you' and i laughed, said 'that's fantastic' but what i meant was she's never seen you bared, or maybe she has, but she's never seen you bared as I have and she sure as hell has never seen the war in your eyes, never scraped the sand and dust out from under your fingernails.  and didn't you kiss my forehead while I took your ghosts and made them mine?

+

they say elephants don't live in Iraq, but i saw their trunks waving across that dry brown landscape and the way they exhausted themselves when they remembered being hunted.  and i too remember being hunted and remember holding the gun all in the same day.  remember pointing my weapon between those wildly calm eyes and then feeling the gray of my knees buckle beneath my weight as that bullet pierced my thick hide.