OUTGUNNED BY LOVE ~A Combat Veteran’s Angelic Encounter~

It was to be a routine mission.
A single drop, and auto-pilot
all the way home.
I sat across from you, sipping my latte,
talking about
God and love
and every child everywhere.

I held you locked on radar,
and listened for the purr of the release doors
before pulling up
and away.

Homeward bound,
I reflected on a world
kept safe from danger.

But that silence.

After my words,
you seemed to stretch comfortably
into your home
of unnatural quiet
like a sleepy cat
on a couch.

With those magnificent
disarming eyes.

I was sure you had swallowed the pill.
But my confidence fell scattered in pieces
when a tear slipped from your
beautiful eyes,
and the words "thank you"
left your lips.


My heart nearly froze,
and my war-torn mind
engaged it's
tired machinery.

My intellect
was frantic to
comprehend
your
staggering
precision.

You adored my puppy-watch.
But you touched my hand
so tenderly
before a direct hit
could be managed.

By the time I realized
that my front-line
had been
penetrated,
you were already
basking in the sun of
some room
I'd never heard of;
right near my heart.

My rivers and canals
pulsed with your
devastating quiet.
My bridges and tunnels
hummed with
the promise of
your incoming
touch.

No experience could have
prepared me
for my perfectly achieved death.

In my last effort,
trembling hands
offered you my poem
before retreating
under the table.

You became still again. That familiar quiet!

Like a super-magnet
pulling nails from wood,
you sucked words from the page.
Oxygen seemed to be leaving the air,
as my unbelieving eyes
gasped in horror.

My fears,
my children,
my missing parts
my broken parts
my mothers words
my unspoken dreams
my darkest rooms
and my core
lay raw
in your hands
like a house teetering on collapse.

My fatal blunder! Surely my last mistake!

Once again caught in your stillness,
I lost all power.
My fighter-plane
exited blue skies
in a trail of
oil and smoke.

You turned the page,
and with Mother Mary's sweet voice,
explained 'I am reading each line three times."

Pinned by your
unending silence,
I watched in awe
as the last nails
were driven with smiles and words
that my wildest dreams
could never have imagined.

Lying there in a pool
of who I once was,
my mental faculties began to slip;
my eyes and ears
began to dance
with a delirious mind.

Captive in a suddenly-strange world,
I was surrounded by you.
Teargas exploded
in every window,
as a bullhorn
echoed the words
"that was beautiful"
through my
rattled skull.

With no guns,
bullets or hidden daggers;
with no shelter or food;
without the possibility
of a fighting chance
I prayed for my soundless demise.

And as she laid me
to rest;
as she followed my body
to the ground;
as her warm hands
touched my cheeks,
an unfamiliar voice
framed the last moment
with "thank you."

The war was over.

The voice was mine.

My fighter-plane is could not be recovered.

Thank you.