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by Justin Patrick

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War changed my grandpa.
As he lay wounded,
a Japanese soldier walked over,
knife raised, but relented,
so I exist.

He told my dad stories
of planes flying into ships,
artillery turning night like day,
a soldier doing a thousand push-ups
on the submarine deck,
who thought himself invincible,
and was shot thirty minutes after landing.

Upon returning home,
his hair went white.
When he arrived at the house
of the woman who would be
my grandma,
her boyfriend, some bigshot,
fled out the back door.

Thaddeus told him to paint
thousands of faces on the walls.
Among them, an angry Jesus,
a shadowy Judas,
closed-eyed soldiers,
and a grey-skinned child
that looked like me.

He wrote a book, now lost,
of talks with Thaddeus,
an outlet for pain
shown in pictures,
his artistic advisor
who didn’t exist.

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Justin Patrick is a PhD student in educational leadership and policy at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on student government and student leadership. His poems and short stories have also appeared in publications such as BearCorn Press, Free Lit Magazine, and Puddles of Sky Press.

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