Here I Throw Down My Heart

Second Tour

51 Second Tour on the first leg of the flight from home she says: I almost missed the plane going by habit into the Men’s thinking I was back in the Zone where we all shared the same urinal—and the soldiers traveling in the same deployment look up in vague surprise from buddy talk: the old routine the joie de vivre that keeps them battlefield ready when they look up it is as if with one blink of the eye she might disappear her shadow still intact and in half a heart beat they turn back back to their own distractions of how close the plane has come to the point of debarkation and how long before one meal tastes like the next and where is it safe to look at the sky or what is there to say when war singles out neither woman nor child so easy to forget we don’t use the same urinal in real life she says to no one in particular and in the silence that follows no one looks up from their appointed tasks: the crossword puzzle, the MP3, the paperback and airplane noise what is there to say when someone is tearing down the house they think should last war or not sweet divisions marking His Hers Ours ...