You Don’t Say Poem by Robert Brendan

You know what man?
he asked me.
What? , I said.
I had a real rough time
growing up where I was from.
Afghanistan, you know.
Yeah, I would guess so
I sputtered. The way he
said it was like if
he had gone to a
rough
school you might
have heard about
in the inner city
of this
city.
How long did you live there
for? I asked
Well, I was there until
the age of
thirteen,
and that was when I came
over here.
And you know what man?
What? , I asked.
I wanted to know.

My earliest childhood
memory man,
let me tell you about
it.
I was in my parents house
where I grew up, you know
and I looked out
the window
but this was a big
window
more like a large hole in
the wall, and on the hill
beyond that window
that I could see
there was this flash and
this trail of smoke
that slammed right into
this helicopter
this soviet helicopter
that was right above
our house man
and I mean it was above
it man.
and it exploded
the helicopter
and I could see the rotor
spinning so slowly
with the blades you know
like time had stopped and slowed
like in that movie you know
the matrix
which is why I liked that
film so much because
when I saw it I thought
about this.
and the men in the
copter
the helicopter
were spinning around with it
but it had exploded so it
was fire
and junk
but sill spinning
toward me and my house
and even though I was
very young I must
have been six or eight
at the time
I thought and knew we
were going to die.
But it went right over
top of us
and crashed
into the neighbors house
and exploded again.
Yeah, I had a pretty rough time
growing up in Afghanistan.