Twenty Years Later

/ What Do We Remember

By Jennifer Schneider

Blank stares. Stars that are aware. Fill in the blanks. Of soil and toil. Of ___ and ___. Troops press on. Muddy quarters. Insurgence and counterinsurgency. Urgency. Few now remember. The date ___. The reasons for. Interviews reveal the fleeting nature of memory. 4,500 U.S. service members. Hundreds of thousands more Iraqi citizens. Shock and awe. The price of war. Flogged and flawed. Weapons of mass destruction. Limited information. Hide-and-go-seek formations. Shapeshifters. Ultimate insurrection. Generations of deconstruction. Regular folk lacking the most basic of cloaks. Boots in bottomless pits. Fill in the ___. Quick.

“What comes next,” Wilbur wanted to know of the web Charlotte had spun. 

There is no answer. There is no more. Lights out. Blood on boots. Flatlines on the ground. It’s important to remember. To fill in the blanks. At kitchen tables. In ___. On ___. Of lineage. Of generational lines. To acknowledge the tanks. The toll. The time. The removal of a dictator alone does not dictate or diminish a future. Victory as much vanity as insanity.

“Trust me, Wilbur,” said Charlotte. “People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.”

Regimes on the ground. Time shifted. Mourning doves chirped at windows despite the late hour. All limbs under covers. One of America’s longest conflicts. A war. Bodies of __ between Then and Now. Here and There. Heirs and airs on all corners. To occupy -- both noun and verb. 

Battlegrounds perpetually in bloom and states of rumination. Disbanded combat-trained armies of men and new nations. Unpredictable views. Soldiers seeking dues. Dictionaries and lessons in history. Quagmires resume. 

“What you mean less than nothing?” asked Wilbur, to which Charlotte did not reply. 

Questions with no answers. Motions lacking notions. The shape of ___. Zigs and sags. The sound of ___. Pulls and tags. Blanks on all sides. 

What’s a life? What’s a war? 

Source: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/news/20030319-17.html

I’d like to think we’ve learned our lessons. I’d like to think that flawed aggression might be of past tense considerations. I’d like to think that one day, all might be free of war and pain. I’d like to think that doing so could be as easy as the ABCs. I’d like to think that we’ll remember. I know better. I continue to dream.