We Need To Tell Kids Flat Out:

My Life Is Not Packaged, Not Tidy. There Are Leftover Strands And Jagged Edges That Cut Even My Friends.

I Joined The Army On My Seventeenth Birthday, Full Of The Romance Of War After Having Read A Lot Of World War I British Poetry And Having Seen A Lot Of Post-world War Ii Films. I Thought The Romantic Presentations Of War Influenced My Joining And My Presentation Of War To My Younger Siblings.

Each Of Us Is Born With A History Already In Place

On The Streets Of The City They Have Taken My Who-i-am As Well As My What-i-was And Now I Am Desperate For Them Both Again

One Of The Lessons Learned During The Vietnam War Was That The Depiction Of Wounded Soldiers, Of Coffins Stacked Higher Than Their Living Guards, Had A Negative Effect On The Viewing Public. The Military In Iraq Specifically Banned The Photographing Of Wounded Soldiers And Coffins, Thus Sanitizing This Terrible And Bloody Conflict.