Ptsd Poem by Arsene Hodali

Ptsd



Post-traumatic stress disorder, the illness warriors get when they come home; when hardness returns to a soft place. The illness where warriors find no war to fight and yet they still do… I heard they used to call it soldier’s heart.

That’s all I know about it though, I’ve never been in the army. Or the navy. But I say I have.

See, I have this hard way of staring; it comes across wrong I guess. And with these ever-growing scars on my wrists I wouldn’t know what else to call them but casualties of war. And I can’t for the life of me walk with someone without checking behind me every so often. Stuff like that is hard for me to stop doing. Seriously! When someone sticks their hand out, my hands form fists. And in the seconds it takes me to raise my hand and shake theirs back, I’ve already waged and won a silent war, demanding they open in kindness instead of the opposite… Stuff like that is hard for me to keep doing.

So, yeah, I tell people I’ve been in the army, or the navy, or whatever.

Just so my rigid way of standing won’t raise questions. Just so my silence can go uninterrupted. Just so I can take long walks alone, deep in thought, and not seem hard and alone, but sad and alone. I would rather people think I’m sad than hard. See, I know hardness is feared, I know it’s hunted. I know it’s hunted, and that eventually it finds itself out of breath, cornered, and on the receiving end of a clenched fist wrapped around a knife. I know hardness is stabbed, repeatedly; hacked-away at, by self-proclaimed Michelangelos who channel Phobos and Deimos, gods of a dead culture. But sadness, that gets you a message of comfort, delivered through an open-palmed pat on the back. I’d rather that than the knife, I am not David.

What’s it called when warriors are born in peacetime with all the fight and paranoia left in them? Pre-traumatic stress disorder? I don’t know, I just say I’ve been in the army, or the navy, or whatever. I’d rather that than the truth.

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Arsene Hodali

Arsene Hodali

Kigali, Rwanda
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