You've never seen the morning scream, alive with the piercing of bullets through the sunrise; the moaning of the earth under the weight of the flesh that will soon become part of it in a safer place, where German and American blood are not soaked into the dirt like chocolate cake.
You've never seen the smoke that streams from the wings of war-machines committing suicide, their pilots wondering if the view of blazing white forests of clouds sailing through the sky like mountains was worth it.
You've never seen a man mummified in barbed wire, or the fireworks that tear men apart.
For you, it has only ever been the stars.
It has only ever been a too-big bed, a reason to climb in and ask your mother why her eyes are leaking. To her, the sheets must feel like drowning.
It only ever rains here, and the sky is just a scar from where the stars were stitched together.
My heart has been cauterized with your photograph so many times, its more burn that beat. You are seared into the backs of my eyelids.
The absence of your laugh nearly ruptures my eardrums. I miss the hugs I have never given you, and the sound of your first steps.
I am ashamed to say that I am closer to ghost memories and the smell of burned skin than I am to my own daughter.
I planned to capture the scream of the morning in your rattle, so you could think of me when you were lonely. I wanted to paint atlases on your slippers as a reminder of all of the places those feet will kiss. I would splatter the galaxies on your ceiling in hopes they would tattoo themselves to your dreams as you slept.
I fear the empty sheets and too full vials of tears will have to do that for me.
You will catch your mother still awake some nights, slow dancing with my ghost int he kitchen, holding onto a prayer sealed with a kiss of thin air. Do not disturb her. Let her feel like I am there.
I cannot fall alseep with the ghost of your tiny head resting against my chest. Darling, the 'I-Miss-you's' number far more than the stars on the flag they will give you for your sacrifice, and you will grow up with a hole in your heart bigger than the bomb that blew me apart.
Darling, I have dreamed of you since I left, and I hope you will dream of me, every time the morning screams.