He sits in a room that does not speak,
the walls bare, except for the scars
he left when he threw his past against them.
A chair, a shadow, the smell of dust
that no longer cares to rise.
He does not cry.
Tears are a luxury of the unbroken.
Once, he carried a badge
like a promise tucked into his chest.
He walked into the dark
so others could stay in the light.
But now the darkness has followed him home,
sat down beside him,
and told him stories no one else wants to hear.
The sirens are gone.
The radio static—silenced.
Only the screams remain,
not in the air,
but in his blood,
in the marrow that rattles inside him
like coins in a forgotten pocket.
His wife left in silence,
closing the door like a whisper
that said: I tried.
His sons grew tired of the phantom
that sat at the dinner table in his place,
the one with hollow eyes
and silence for a voice.
Even the dog no longer waits by his feet.
Even the ghosts look away now.
He cannot forget the boy
who ran when he should have surrendered,
the woman who bled too long,
the partner who didn’t come back.
These are not memories—
they are anchors made of bone.
He counts the cracks in the ceiling
the way a soldier counts the dead.
Each one a name,
a breath he cannot give back.
The room offers no comfort,
only the honesty of emptiness.
It does not lie.
It does not say it will be okay.
The world outside
no longer speaks his language.
He has no medals, only
questions that bite like dogs.
Did I do enough?
Did I become the thing I was supposed to fight?
Where did everyone go?
There is no redemption in this silence,
only the long unraveling of time,
the soft corrosion of memory.
He lights a cigarette that stays between his fingers
like a confession he’s too tired to make.
Smoke curls upward,
as if trying to escape the weight
of what he cannot say.
He does not pray.
Not to God,
not to the flag,
not to the badge.
He simply waits
for the day when the room
will finally forget his name—
or the moment
when he forgets it himself.
Broken Author 