Morning in the living room. Birds stitching light through the blinds. Two days before April 15. Taxes due. Thirty days on a month-to-month to get the hell out.
Us. Harold. Latifah. Jesus. Twelve years for them. Three for us. A duplex learning how to forget our names.
I will miss the walk to camp. Miss my youngest studying that busted community watch sign, its one blind eye blurred with grit, saying, Watch out for falling meteors, Dad.
And maybe he was right.
The eye did look like a meteor. A small fire aimed at the poor in spirit.
Back inside.
So here I sit, in a country of wolves with flag pins and soft hands, chewing the cud, chewing the cud, asking the old question:
What is a man supposed to eat when even his fear has been itemized?
Outside, America keeps its altars warm. Moloch still hungry. Still taking boys who used to be boys like me— boots green as fresh bruises, heads shaved down to render obedience, sent off as an offering to smoke and diesel. A stranger.
And the VA, somewhere under fluorescent hum, still deliberates whether the body keeps what the Army gave it.
As if thunder leaves no residue. As if the body still reports for duty in the dark. As if night is not a battlefield that keeps what it kills.
Still— the birds this morning. Still the birds.
Little throats in the branches making a racket against the ledger, against the notice taped to the door, against the slow machinery of removal.
And my son, with his meteor gospel, teaching a worn-out sign to burn again. That may be all the mercy we get:
one child, one wrong name for a thing, and suddenly the world remembers it is falling.
— Jack Stallings, April 13, 2026
