When Appa comes back from the war
you should know he’s not done with
the shooting and killing
just yet.
There’s one more bullet he’s saved
just for us, the gunpowder reeking of corpses that
drank and laughed with him once.
You’ll see the way he unloads his gun
when he raises his fist against your mother
to crush the war that was supposed to have ended
on the battlefield but somehow enlists him again
and again. He’ll look at his family but smell dressing
rooms in which limbless men croak for one last breath.
He’ll sprinkle his gunpowder across generations
and mix it with genes that will shudder at even the
stranger whose mouth tosses half-hearted bullets.
When Appa comes back from the war
you should know that it’s our turn
to enlist.
This poem is a powerful and haunting depiction of war’s impact on a family. The father’s trauma from war manifests as violence within the home, wounding his wife and children. The poem suggests that the scars of war are passed down through generations, with each family member becoming a soldier in their own right, perpetuating a cycle of violence.