Tracers in the Sky
by Terry Brinkman

 

 

Vietnam Prisoner of War Spa; fire fight tracer’s shadows lay on my sweat-wet bed laying on the fetid clay floor. In the distance voices you can’t understand screaming and crying, you recognize and remember too well (soon it will be me again).

Last year under snowy fall skies; being tackled fumbling the Pig-Skin, losing the play-off game. Felt like the end of the world!  

Eating food that has passed good weeks ago, leaving it on the floor hoping bugs will go on it so I can eat the bugs, problem being they are from nightmare theater, green monster looking bugs. I close my eyes and chomp on them. They taste bad but some improvement on the moldy gruel.

In an endless meandering line holding hands with Rose, hope for Sloppy-Joes at the end of the line; cold Fish-Sticks, and warm Cold-Slaw.    

Sleeping in a room so small you can’t sleep straight only with legs bent; oh, what a Coffen. Some fool in the room next to you keeps tapping Morse the Code of Mores on the wall; my head is throbbing so bad I wish they would stop!

Mom telling me the same thing for the umpteenth time, no! I am not stupid just preoccupied.

This place smells so bad like a mature woman’s way past due needing a cleaning. So hot and mildew if you don’t keep moving the mold starts growing on myself.

Locker-Room, every-time, after Foot-Ball practice what an odor.

Time outside bare-footed gravel so sharp cutting my feet, makes me cry.

Camping in dry Idaho; foot in boot without looking for a Scorpion pinch.

One Earth, under One Sky, just One Year later.

 

Rate this story.

Copyright is reserved by the author. Please do not reproduce any part of this article without consent.