The Voices of War

Jesse Doiron

March 24, 2022

Listen for them.

These are the voices it will use.

At first, the murmuring of discontent.

The innuendo and the sneer. The snide and subtle insult.

A shout from an unseen basement, from a stoop, some balcony, a roof.

The rush of judgments falling out of place in conversations all around, and then the thumping in the auditoriums. 

Soon afterward, other voices come.

Grinding, groaning, clanking, rumbling, heavy sounds –  machines.

Each day they moan in pain to gain another day and though they stop, they will begin again.

Though they rest the night, they will return to break the morning quiet.

Once awake, they move from far to near to closer here another day to say that they will sleep with you tonight.

But you will not sleep.  

Oher voices stay awake. High-pitched. Whirring. Hissing.  

Deafening, they swell outside of you, inside of you. And in you, huge.

Until their sound becomes no sound at all, becomes a ringing nothingness. 

And from the empty void, new voices then arise to fill the empty air with hopelessness, the noise of despair    

Screaming. Crying. Calling. Coughing.

Unguarded speech. Offensive epithets. Cursing. Damning.

Retching, sweating, wheezing, spitting, weeping, bleeding.

Naming body parts. Naming parts of hell and heaven. Naming names naming names. 

While someone you do not know pushes and pulls a piece of you that once was part of you but now is not, now gone.

Listen. Listen, now. Listen for the last voice of the war.

Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.