Carrie

I remember when I started to get well and they would let me roll around
as long as I kept to the main ward floor. I was learning to speak again.
learning to act appropriately since the accident and the portals
they drilled in my head had began to be covered by hair.
Sometimes on good days I would walk across the floor on my own.

Three months before I was ten feet tall and bullet proof,
so full of shit my eyes were extra brown. No one could touch me.
Then I fell from the sky with half a parachute in thirty mile an hour winds
breaking thirty bones and fracturing my skull.

On the third night I tried to choke a nurse who was adjusting a blanket.
Three techs sedated me the carted me to the mental ward.
Long term care as I ranted and raved mad for no reason.
At war with my own body fighting an unseen enemy
who appeared in shadows when I was alone.

You had not quit calling, but I had not remembered you.
A young girl named Carrie twenty one with red hair and blue eyes.
Only flickers of memories would come back to my mind
like a DVD that was scratched at all the meaningful episodes.

Sometimes I think that is why I went mad because we had something
and by the fickle finger of fate I could not remember what it was.
You drove all the way to Walter Reed from Fort Bragg to see
a young man with metal in his head and a mouth that could not kiss
as he glared at you unable to pronounce your name, unable to attached
I remember you turned away and I wondered why you were crying.

There are hazy days that are still unclear in the eight months
that I was there twisting my mind and trying to fix the legs
that did not want to walk as I sent desperate prayers to God
and listened to logical explanations from doctors and cried "Bullshit!"

I have no clue where you are now Carrie and I still barely remember
the moments of our young love. I am sure you moved on. But I can
still see your eyes and those freckles and I am sure I am at a loss.