Wartime Comfort

By Dr. Lydia Gibson

​

Unwashed potatoes and rough hands mark the start of the war. Whose
knuckle-down formations and dull sirens tease warm, heavy, comforting
torment. This
torrent will weight us down,
it will sit atop our bare chests and the pressure and
the moisture from its clammy hands will grope and cradle
us. As it holds me, so I sleep. Condensed
on the window and where I stand. Small
stifled, swaddled – 3 more yards of calico

I dig my trench and look over at hers. Her
eyes meet mine and we smile thin smiles with no corners and no
end. Glazed and muted with giddiness for the suffering
we shall soon endure. We will suffer.
We will work and we will toil and we will trundle and we will bleed and we will live and we will
die and we will sacrifice. Give
and shiver and suffer. It is
wet and sloppy and cold in our new home, where
metal and starches festoon each day. What sweet,
cloying comfort
as the suffering presses deeper until
we no longer feel it stiff and harsh and brusque against
our ruddy, prickled skin. Have one.

It’s almost twelve years to the day when
they say it’s nearly over and our eyes meet once more, hers is
panicked and searching. Advance peels open our roofs and hacks away
our homes and everything we have worked hard
to build – this prison, these walls, this pain, the

glorious weight
all dissipates. I
stand now
alone where the air is thin and breath is desperately full, suspended
and motionless without my blanket. Ripped feet
first from my putrid, open womb. I
dangle and they see. Hold it right there – index
finger to right ear, nod.
It’s not

over. But I don’t care for this half war, this
meagre battle that strips me and dunks me and splashes
all over – dipped in and out. It claws
and rushes, and clamours.
Disorienting me as I hang from
my ankles, unable to take
root in
my suffering. I
try to paw it away but it
keeps returning
and it is narrow and girthless and feckless and pointless
but pointed right at me
curved needles that can never close
me or fill me or home me or bathe me or
clothe me or cloak me or
weigh me
down