I promise myself to stop writing about my trauma
but I work in trauma, my job is trauma, has always been
trauma, the dead from when I was an EMT not dead, but
here, now, in my head, but I’m trying to focus on how
alive the baby was from the swimming pool, even if its
arms were so floppy, the E.R. med tech running down
the hall, soft-yelling, The front, we need people up front,
now! and I have no nightmares from being an EMT, all
my nightmares from the military, where I wake up
screaming and my ex- told me my scream wasn’t like
it was from me, but was a little boy, and she asked me
what I was dreaming and I don’t remember, but I do,
don’t want to talk about it, but it’s always the split-
second before the thing comes at me, into me, to split
me, the bodies melting together I saw through binoculars
that I didn’t, but I did, but I didn’t, but I did, because
PTSD, I’ve learned, isn’t an anxiety disorder, but rather
a memory disorder, the disordering of memory, and
in the military, when they would give us orders, some-
times they would be legal and logical and legit and
other times they would ask us to boil the dead in ash
and they would put rivers of hate in our vesicles
and they would search and destroy the urban poor
and the rural poor and I was the rural poor and I
remember doors we would be forced to go through
where on the other side the bomb squad wouldn’t be
there yet and then the memory of the psych officer
who had a panic attack about his gas mask, trying
to take it off, and the CO actually tackling him, telling
others to bumrush—the violence of preventing violence—
if his mask came off, he could be exposed to whatever
was out there—mustard gas—such a strange term—
it made me think of have faith the size of a mustard
seed—and I remember the bulrush where we did
training, the marshes, how wet we were, and how
three were killed there, one in training, and we were
hilled there, heavily clustered spikelets, sedge family,
and one guy sucker punched me, first to the skull,
contused, a spot I later learned is where the hippo-
campus lies, the university of our brain, where
memory is stored, exactly where he punched me,
like he was trying to delete my hard-drive, and
the second to the jaw, like he wanted to mute me,
and I asked what I did wrong, and he said he just
wanted to hurt someone, a guy who’d later try
to commit suicide, fail, and I remember being told
how angry that made him, that he tried to kill him-
self because he kept failing, and it just became
another failure. Later, jailed. Where so many
vets end up. One in three vets have been arrested.
And later, he ODed. On accident too. Funny how
the world works. Went into cardiac arrest. I think
sometimes we just want the world to stop. My ex-
was French. She told me the French word for stop
is arrêt. I miss her. So badly. I wish it would stop.
• • •
I am getting older now and so
I am not invited
and so
there are the long long gaps between getting a response on Bumble
long gaps
of longing
where
in the past
it was gaps of a date
but now it’s the gap of even having someone like me
reach out to me
connect with me
if even briefly
and one writes
We’re too far away to date
but you looked lonely
and I look at my photos
and I don’t look lonely,
do I?
and I am getting older now
finishing up my grad degree
so that I get the student discount and the senior discount
at the same time
so I was able to buy this poem
and change this poem
into a poem
where I am invited
but I am on the elevator
and the two girls
talk through me
like I am a ghost
and I wonder
if ghosts
are just not seen
because they are old
if maybe
I am part ghost now
getting closer
to being full ghost
and it’s long
and lonely
and beautiful,
this life
• • •
Walking
to get to my PTSD counselor, I go by a room
where guys with no legs are learning how to walk.
There’s a walkway with handles on both sides.
He’s not doing well. I stand in the doorway.
His back is to me. If he could see me, I wouldn’t
be watching. I’m looking at his leg. Titanium.
There’s a mirror. I notice the mirror. I notice
him looking at me in the mirror. I leave.
My grandfather was missing two fingers.
He lost them in the mine. He never found
them again in the mine. I remember Christmas
and Thanksgiving, when he’d fall asleep in his
chair after the meals. I could look at his missing
fingers for as long as I wanted. If his eyes opened,
I’d just look at something else quickly. One time
I was looking down at his fingers. I was young.
I didn’t understand anything. The world was loud.
The Christmas lights were too bright for me.
There was worry I was on the spectrum. I kept
staring at the missing fingers. It didn’t make sense.
Where would they go? It was like I was looking
at a part of a ghost. My mouth was open, a sort
of fear. A sadness. I didn’t want pain in the world.
I looked up. My grandfather’s eyes were open.
I screamed.
• • •
Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize for a poem published in BoomerLitMag. Right now, Riekki’s listening to David Bowie’s “China Girl.”