Poetry By Colleen M. Farrelly

 asdcjasdcj: Flickr CC



​​5th Floor Support
 
Another Thursday night, one of a string of Thursday nights lately starting with an 8 AM Grand Rounds neurology
lecture at Jackson Memorial and ending across NW 12th Avenue at the VA Hospital. There’s a barricade and some
benches near the lobby door where guys smoke before our support meeting. I see a couple of friends in the crowd
—my generation—and sit next to an OIF friend fresh off a spinal surgery.
 
curlicues of smoke
wrap around the flagpole--
the past’s python feeding
 
P. asks if I heard about last weekend’s Boston bombing and mentions his flashbacks to Ramadi. I’d frozen in my
living room when the words flashed across CNN: ball bearings. At that moment, I knew what my fellow medics saw
at the finish line: shattered bones, open chest cavities, fasciculations of amputated muscles…
 
lunar eclipse--
drops from a
shrapnel hole
 
P. nods. J. looks towards the sliding doors behind us. It’s good that we’re headed to a meeting. I wheel P.
past the visitor’s post to the elevator corridor and press 5—the behavioral floor. In the designated room, we
hold hands and pray to start our meeting.
 
nanotubules
stronger linked together
than apart



​#22aDay
 
It’s a hashtag that’s circled the Veteran community lately and even has made it into the news. It’s only half
the story, though. The tally doesn’t include suicide by cop or finding a friend cold with a needle in his arm.
It doesn’t include drunk driving accidents or a dealer-related drive-by. Do not resuscitates. Barroom brawls.
Neglecting a helmet or seatbelt. There are a lot of creative ways to die without the death counting in the
tally.
 
Living is harder. Aside from the well-publicized flashbacks or lost buddies on the battlefield, there’s the
Facebook posts and late-night texts. Did you hear that X has died? Finding a friend face-down on the living
room floor. Ten-month backlogs at the VA hospital. Revolving deployments of family and friends. Even hearing a
professor or classmate rail against the military every other week. Life is harder.
 
out of the rubble,
a lily pokes through--
life winning



Colleen M. Farrelly is a freelance writer and data scientist in Miami, FL. She's seen and experienced a few things over the years and enjoys passing it on to others.