At Home in War

She brought the war to me.
She crossed the sea and came to me,
for whom the battalions' march pounded
only in the bold, big and black letters
of the headlines.
I stopped nursing my insomnia and
started nursing hers.
I became her child and her sisters
and their killers, and she brought in the war
with her kisses, kicks and slaps,
and I wept and laughed with her,
bizzarely thankful for any role;
helpless spectatorship to a remembered war
is worse than
helpless spectatorship to a real war.
So I would cry and scream and fight
and throw my head from side to side
at imagined slaps,
and would close my eyes shut
and scream
as her legs were spread open
to make way for the warriors.