empty echoes in his wake by Cali O’Donovan (17, California)

​This is a letter for the broken soldier,
The shattered man who’s lost his mooring post,
He walks with heavy steps among company who fractured with him,
Nurses wounds that go deeper than skin, deeper than flesh,

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​He carries with him an enduring affliction he cannot seem to shake,
Something running rampant through his veins - it stings viciously,
The fragments of this broken man will lie atop a mountain,
Name engraved in stone, soul lost in the great gales which assail this peak;
 
This is a letter for the grieving wife,
The mother who hasn’t showered but for sweat and tears washing down her body,
She sinks into a seat he used to occupy, 
Watches out their bedroom window, caught in the emptiness of its indistinct reflection,
 
The watching glass adjusts to a looking glass as that vague outline deepens,
Her person peeks back too clearly, displaying a hole in a home but she hoped to watch herons,
The rattling breaths she forces to afford her lungs letup seem to shake the house,
Empty as it lies, barrenness filtering through the halls like a silent, noxious gas;
 
This is a letter for the withdrawn, reticent son,
The fearful child who’s still a child decades after the broken soldier stopped calling him one,
He huddles in the corner, watching, donning a mask of assuredness and hoping it holds,
Pasting patches of poise, casings of confidence, pressing them down over a pallid complexion,
 
He draws himself up to be a man, a soldier,
He draws a cracking frown upon his face, restrained, brow furrowed like a broken soldier,
His smooth speech, words falling from his lips like honey, flows past the gravel in his throat,
Back stiff as steel, up straight like a soldier, chin held high to hide his face from prying eyes who cannot see him shatter;
 
Finely outlined shore in the distance, shore you cannot see though you stare straight at its lighthouse,
Row or swim towards a dock where you might be moored,
Oar no further after a mountain where his fragments have blown away into the wind,
Sit by the window and watch the herons glide on the same breeze which carried away your broken soldier.

Cali O’Donovan is a seventeen-year-old writer from Los Angeles, California. She enjoys writing poetry, short stories and essays, and she soon hopes to major in English to further pursue her love of writing. When she’s not writing, she's usually playing piano or reading an Agatha Christie novel.
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