by Colin D. Halloran

“He can be terrible, he can be mean, he can be right. Like war.”
—Apocalypse Now

Can love not be these things?
Terrible and mean.
Right as a relative term?

Love and war, poised as opposites,
but kindred.

And what of love in war?
One begets the other
and coexistence leads to coalescence.

I carried love’s burden each day in war
and watched as war broke love
on my return.

But love—like war?—is said to come
in many forms.
You love your mother. Your girl.
Your favorite pair of shoes.

I took those shoes with me to war
and wore them when I could,
their warm, worn, familiar feel
a comfort as they passed over
sand and stone. So different
than those first days on Boston’s cobbles,
needing to learn the feel of me
and I of them.

And after my deployment,
my return to the so-called
real
world
as if the smoke and sands
were simply figments.

I took those shoes I loved
abroad again, introduced them
to the streets of London,
the bridges of Paris,
Firenze’s back alleys.
And together we traipsed the world,
those shoes I loved and I.

But already the holes were there,
soaking up Parisian rain,
dying white socks leather-brown.

But despite frayed laces,
faded leather and flattened tread
turned to holes,
I held on.

Held on out of love,
even as the crumbled, so literally
beneath my feet.

And is that not love?
Not war?
Not what I carried to and from
those blood-stained sands?

–

–

–

---

Colin D. Halloran served as an infantryman with the US Army in Afghanistan. He has since published three collections of poetry about war and PTSD, Shortly Thereafter, Icarian Flux, and American Etiquette. He is pursuing a PhD with a focus on war poetry and war as a cultural object. More information can be found at www.colindhalloran.com and www.warpoetrymap.com.

–

–

–