The Insurgent - Eliot Khalil Wilson
No one saw him climb over the Hesco
barriers, so he just appeared and walked
under the lights where no one ever goes.
An actor who moves in my sleep, he talked
to the air, his hands tucked under his arms.
A boy who might have been cold or wired.
A cattle herder from the nearby farms
or Taliban out to plant an IED.
We knew the protocol of escalation,
hand signals, warning shots, the distance limit.
He walked, we fired—what was termed a precaution.
The boy was deaf, we learned, and slow-witted.
He was born the way we had learned to be.
No wind could lift that bloodied sand to sea.