Broken & dented - he was never really mine to lose

“If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.“

But what if that something decides to leave on his own, before love is actualized?

I’m not certain you can lose something that was never really yours to begin with.

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I’m not sure anyone has ever told you before

I’d like you to know that you’re not the man you think you are

Outside you exhibit near perfection

All the while inside you are a wreckage of abused and neglected debris

I understand what it is like to be broken

As I’ve had to put my own pieces back together

That feels like ages ago

And now I am close to whole

Your own pilgrimage has finally begun

Casting truths to those well guarded and deeply tucked away secrets

“Why are you always so happy?”

Just asking me that shows me how shattered your soul really is

I look into your empty searching eyes

And know that the fault is not mine

Holding a gun and standing post, doesn’t give you strength

Character is born from the choices that are made in everyday life

You invited me into your past, forcing me to question

my own moral compass

As you dumped the evilness into my lap

Your past is a place I don’t belong

A place I never planned on trudging through with you

You explained away your uncertain future

Hiding behind systems and policies that were suddenly out of your control

I never pressured you to be part of this unpredictable journey

It was too soon to know if I even wanted to join you out in the unknown

All I wanted was your present; your today; this moment

But you’re too busy running from demons and chasing down simulated ambition

To realize that today is all I’ve ever asked for

Your busted up perception forces you to keep one eye staring

in the rearview mirror

While the other anxiously searches out a better tomorrow

Left blinded to what stands right in front of you

Shielding yourself from present day emotions

Choosing numbness over sensation

I married the military mindset once before

I know that I just don’t have it in me to do again

If that makes me weak or unkind or selfish

I’ll own it all.

This same self-indulgent narcissistic methodology came close to destroying me once

Who would I be if I allowed history to repeat itself, having learned nothing?

Could you wipe your conscience clean if you found the courage to answer why

You feel the urgency to volunteer to return to war once more?

Are you running to help a nation in crisis?

Or running away from a fear far greater than war?

…the dread of the unknown

…the horror of what comes next when war is no more

The answers you’ve been struggling to find

Don’t lie in the sands of Afghanistan

But you’ll soon discover

That those very questions you’re trying to escape from

will still be here to slap you in the face upon your return