They have sex the first night he comes home. He sweeps her off her feet, twirls her from the airport to their bed. They still call it theirs though it’s never been shared before. Mismatched bed-sheets are soon damp with their sweat. The age-old springs protest loudly, unused to this kind of strenuous exercise. He whispers in her ear the words she’s longed to hear – he loves her, he missed her, he needs her, I love you baby, I love you so goddamn much. Her fingers curl against his bare chest, a chest that’s intact, that still holds a heart that beats for her. Oh beautiful unmarred skin. Oh beautiful, beautiful man that came home to her. They clutch at each other and cry and sleep.

She wakes up to an empty bed. For a second, she thinks it’s the same old day again. Same routine, same pain, same lonely life. She closes her eyes, wanting to retreat back into the warmth of sleep but memory returns and with it, his presence. Oh. Not so lonely after all, she smiles, gets up and although he is nowhere to be found, makes him breakfast anyway. It is cold when he returns. He smiles wanly when she asks him where he went. Nowhere, dear. Just went for a walk. She believes him and reheats the food.

A day. A day. A day. Why does the house feel emptier with him in it than when he was stuck in some god-forsaken place? She wonders and hurts. Where does he go? What is it that makes his eyes unfocused, his hands flutter and fall, useless? A week. A week. A week. He knows what he’s doing to her but he can’t seem to stop. Whose body is this anyway that he’s occupying? It’s a foreign extension to him – a plastic arm that won’t listen to what he tells it to do. He drifts away, an empty mind in a sea of sharp blasts, red dreams. Why are you doing this to me? Please tell me what’s wrong.

You wouldn’t understand.

From a distant enclave in his heart he wonders how he could ever tell her. How he could ever make her understand. He looks at himself in the mirror and tries out words in his mouth. I killed people. Once, a child by accident. He tries again. My ears ring with gunshots. The screams of my comrades, my friends. Nothing works. Words are too bulky for this fragile sanity he holds inside. He cries huddled on the tile floor of his bathroom and gives up.

Yesterday, today she wakes up and stumbles to the toilet, acid and last night’s cold dinner forcing their way up her throat. Today and today – something is not right. She fears the feeling in the stomach. Something is not right. It is a week week before she can work up the courage to tell him. Any reaction would have been better than no reaction, she thinks bitterly afterwards. He has shut himself in the room with the bed they still have the audacity to call theirs. He cradles his head in his too capable hands and shakes. The roaring in his head scatters shrapnel of memory. Embeds in his skull. Innocent eyes glazed over. Blood on the wall. Shut up, he whispers and storms out. He comes home drunk.

She could never understand him when he drank too much, his words much too slurred, his thoughts much too disjointed. She is frustrated. Who the hell is Askari? Thomas? He keeps laughing and making toy guns with his fingers. Pow. Pow. He laughs. Angry, she locks herself in the room and ignores his pounding and curses. He sleeps on the ground tonight.

Time slips by. She cries frequently now, usually after she screams at him. Please. I can’t do this on my own. Please help me. He tries, he honestly does, but memory is a slippery thing for him. Yesterday, he was still trapped in the desert with sand for breakfast. Tomorrow, he’ll still be there. The dishes continue to pile in the sink, untouched. She doesn’t know if she’s grateful that he got a job or not. It keeps him away from the house and away from her. She can’t tell if it’s a good or bad thing. Please. I can’t do this on my own.

His eyes tell his mind that her waist is growing, rounding out like the sandy dunes he so often sighted. He watches and helpless, is impartial. The guns will mow her down. Get down, get down. For godssake get down. Sometimes in disbelief, he’ll touch her stomach and this hurts her more than his distance. Please. He backs away again, her words lost but not lost enough to find him. She circles the date in red on the calendar. She knows he’ll forget otherwise. Be there, she begs. You must be there, she commands. Yes. I will. She eyes him warily and can do nothing.

The time has come and sweat beads her weary face. It mingles with her tears and she is grateful that they are mistaken for physical pain. Her heart breaking, she wails and pushes and pushes. It is so. hard. Where. is he. that bastard. Bastard. You said- you said – her vision goes white.

She wants him out. The first day she comes home from the hospital she searches for him. I want you out. The words are poised on her tongue, ready to be tipped, ready to break what is already broken. She waits for him but her exhausted body sends her to bed. She kisses her sleeping boy, touching his face, still in awe that this is hers, her baby, so beautiful. Carefully, she places him in the crib she bought herself from the thrift store, strokes his hair one last time and sleeps.

An hour. The door opens as he lets himself in. He’s gotten the angry messages on his cell phone, he knows what awaits him. He stands in front of the door to their makeshift nursery and hesitates. Silence muffles the house. Slowly, he opens the door and steps in. Standing over his son, he breathes in the his unfamiliar clean scent. Watches him sleep.

A thousand thousand dead that day. A thousand thousand wrongs committed.

Even in the dark, his son is red faced.

Red seeps under his fingernails as he holds the injured, the dying – hurts and dies with them. He failed in his protection.

A soft gurgle escapes the child. Contented, he shifts and continues sleeping.

The gun hot in his hands, the bullet – not mine, not mine – already shredding, destroying. Oh, innocence lost.

A baby –

A child, a child –

Trembling, he reaches out and touches his son. His son. Oh, innocence.

He cries, the past and the future heavy in his lids. The warmth of hope has a red face.