The quiet girl I’d admired on the playground
defended me against a boy with rough grasp
and bad breath. Ended with her knee scraped,
dark with embedded mulch. The boy
ran, exiled from swing and slide.
That spring, I gave her a locket
from the five and ten, real sterling plate.
Not a partial heart, with zig-zag edges,
I trusted her to take the whole. And wasn’t she
the bearer of some universal principle:
What you shed for someone incurred a debt.
In the military, I spilled not one red drop—
still, the discharge, honorable. Still, years later,
thanked by strangers. What did I do?
Sat in the clinic. Tried to save the wounded
from an aftermath I could hardly fathom.
There is a man, now, up in the air.
A slick plane flung between continents.
My friend and I pricked our thumbs with a needle,
pressed them together. Citizens then, of each other.
Not enough to make a man homeless,
he must be motherless, childless as well.
His body belongs to no country.
His body gone, with its generous blood.
Morrow Dowdle is the author of the chapbook Hardly (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and has work appearing or forthcoming from New York Quarterly, RATTLE, ONE ART, and Southeast Review. They run a performance series which features historically marginalized voices and are an MFA candidate at Pacific University.
