The Places You Go In Your Mind

Untitled

We launched a thousand ships that day,

and none of them were pretty.

Quite frankly,

I've never seen so many men cry,

whether from broken heart or broken home.

When the bombs fell,

amid all the chaos and the running,

a million souls wailed,

shrieking into the night for futures unmet,

children unparented,

lives unlived,

and chances not taken.

I have never been less prepared to speak with someone

than when I had to stand up before a million widows

and significant others

to tell them that their lovers were not coming home.

I had failed them,

and they all knew it.

Every face was colored with disappointment,

beneath the grief and running mascara.

Only the floors of churches knew more knees

and hands clenched in prayers of denial

than that of the room they'd given me to do this in.

It wasn't fair,

not to any of us in that room that day.

Not to me,

who had never asked for this job,

never wanted this responsibility,

nor to those grieving masses,

whose happiness was cut short

by a war they never even started.