The Man Who Could Not Talk About the War

He grabs her arm, seizing her from sleep
at three a.m. Don’t move.
There’s someone here. Next to us.
She looks into the darkness
then again to his face, filled now
with transparency, carried back
to the jungle, to the ambush.
It’s a dream, she tells him.
We’re all right. Go back to sleep.

He sinks back to silent breathing
until suddenly he flings his arm
across her shoulder. Stay where you are, he shouts.
This place is full of mines
.Help them, help them, but she cannot
see the bodies or hear the sounds they make.

She lies in the narrowness
of one side of the bed,
touching his hand until light
seeps through the window across the contour
of the no one who is there.
Waking, he reaches for her
and turning to him she thinks
of the things that can be shared:
a table, a bed.