RON RIEKKI

THE SECONDS WHEN I LEFT THE COUNSELING
OFFICE AND FELT THE PTSD MIGHT BE LEAVING
THIS TIME FOREVER

I’d arrived by foot, but the parking lot greeted me anyway with a gala
of sun, as if the past, the onomapoetic plot!, was barbecued, ready to be
eaten, shared, trashed; I wish this hilly bliss could blizzard the vets

drowning in the intrusive flashback nets, could fix their hashed exits
with the new days of denouements, to be rescued by relief,

decluttered, as if ungunned, the agony gone, fileted;

there are times you feel good enough to grace God with belief.