I didn’t dodge a bullet; I dodged
a war a hostage situation a hostile
takeover. I take my pain straight
no honey no sugar. I feel it raw.
Evasion doesn’t mean clean and easy.
 

It would not have been what it could
have been so it became a small distance
between meeting in face to face heat
and swimming into a ditch. Salt water
chokes. Swamp water stifles.
 

Camouflage and fatigue apply to
the rules of distraction—we were
unsafe. I was not okay. Though in
it that was love. In it that was an
exposed recognition, a shiny object
brand new. The armory grows;
the fault brews to boil over.
Tattoo’s fresh ink already fading.
 

He left me with one lesson—how
to hit a deer. Never, never touch the
brakes he said you have to gun
the gas and keep driving through.