The Year You Served
by Naomi Dean
The fear of a closed casket,
the fear of an open one: it was
a ragged year, a year of fear.
We feared flower arrangements
and hymns, dates chiseled in stone.
The flag we flew and the yellow
ribbons we wore wouldn’t be
enough, we feared. I worried little
about my pregnancy, more about
whether you would meet your
nephew. I was trying for hope,
settling for worry when I was
lucky enough to avoid fear.
Before I was pregnant, before you
were gone, I feared this would be our
last meal together: dinner in the Haight,
too much sangria, or too little,
plátanos fritos, black beans and rice.
The next morning, the fear that
the drive to the airport would be
the last one: the ride too long
and not nearly long enough,
with everything and nothing to say.
What did we talk about? Farming,
I guess, to calm us: back to our
roots and our hope for return.
The fear of southeast Baghdad,
of your next mission, the one
you’d mentioned on the webcam,
the one you’d do in your morning,
while we slept, or tried to.
We didn’t know everything to be
afraid of until you came back
to tell us. It turns out there was
fear even in our hope: your
replacements. Still green, they
stopped a car they shouldn’t have.
You had a creeping feeling as you
searched the trunk, a fear of explosives.
Above all, I feared the phone.
I ran to it; I wanted to forget it.
I wanted to forget phones
setting off blasts. Would it ring
in my classroom, or on my cell?
No bomb, no IED. A phone just
a phone again. Our fear cuts
loose from our bones. Our lungs
relax, like we forgot they could.
Take us home with you, now,
where we’ll answer the phone
like we’re normal and forget
with our muscles, when we can.
Naomi Dean has taught English and Spanish in Brooklyn, New York, and Palo Alto, California. She currently teaches ESL at a public elementary school in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband, son, and daughter. Her poem “The Year You Served” is about her experience of her brother's deployment to Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard. Naomi’s work has recently appeared in Poetica, Sylvia, and The Madrigal and is forthcoming in NiftyLit.