Collateral Damage

She haunts me:
a thin, scarfed silhouette searching
for a face lost in history.
Abandoning her
to an uncertain fate
a pariah among her people.

We all look the same to her.
Our uniforms blend us
into shades of tan and brown.
Yet she hopes
and still searches
thinking one of us might be him.

She walks past, unescorted,
for a quick glace
avoiding eye contact
trying to preserve the disguise
of a lost dignity, a cultural rule
that was broken
and can never be mended

She stops at a distance
to search hopefully
for one recognizable sign:
how we stand or talk;
a vain hope,
then turns the corner
a slim, scarfed shadow.
A spirit.

And like a specter
she reappears to my left
where she began.
Moving at a measured pace,
a funeral walk,
towards me, then away.
Stops, observes, turns,
And reappears.

She continues this
haunting march
hoping he will call to her,
break the spell,
but the words will never come.
He is not there,
and she is alone.
None will walk with her now.

She reappears
a timid smile
moving towards us,
towards me
gracefully silent
hopeful
holding something to her breast.

She held out a picture
battered and creased, faded,
of a small group of
young American soldiers.
They were smiling and cocky.
Her treasure.
Especially one of them.

She pointed to him,
and raised her hand
in question.
Where was he? Did I know him?
Smiling, consoling,
I shook my head.
I did not know him, how to
contact him.
He was merely memory now,
a soldier passing through
history, and long gone home.

She stared with an intensity
that belied the tears
forming in her eyes
blinking,
and lightly touched her belly.
I knew then
he had ruined her somehow,
shamed her in the eyes of her people.
He was the reason
she walked alone,
lost,
without escort or friend.

A brave smile above a quivering chin,
she turns, a hint of jasmine,
and is blown down the street
to uncertainty
the unknown.
Another product of our
great democracy.

There is truth
in our believing
We cause greater harm
in our attempts to heal.
She is proof.
The silent, scarfed shadow
that haunts my life.

-Brent Nice 01/27/2009