Soldier

It breaks my heart - the way they talk about you
as if you are nothing more than a failure or
a disappointment or
an addict.

Turning a blind eye to your pain, never considering how
difficult it must have been failing to meet expectations
while everyone around you was
exceeding them.

Seeing only the mistakes and the blunders and
all of the cuts and the bruises that your
transgressions have left on them and
ignoring your own.

But I see you - a person (in pain) who stumbles and falls
but still rises each morning as a man, as a father
a soldier.

Nights

Many nights while lying quietly in bed
wearing only my underwear, book in hands

I feel your eyes on me.

Watching me, admiring as if I were
a painting, a piece of art perhaps a watercolor.

I feel your eyes on me.

And for just a moment I know what it must feel like to be
a Monet or possibly even a Picasso.

Mornings

I awake most mornings to the smell of you getting ready
dabbling about between the sink and the bedroom
quietly opening closets and putting on clothing
so as not to disturb me.

But it's your smell that wakes me so
gracefully wafting into my subconscious
not soap nor hairspray nor the pot of coffee you've brewed
just simply your smell - indescribably you.

And I think to myself how tragic mornings would be
if I were forced to awake to only the smell of coffee.