…Being out here is like living a life in sepia; everything is faded
into a dull, sweltering brown as colorless as the sand…
Life was different before deployment. Easy. Back in Fort Riley, Sergeant Lorelei Edwards was a proud soldier who could flaunt a short skirt, sling back a Long Island and disassemble a bomb with equal effortlessness. But Iraq changed all that. War blasted it all apart. Suddenly everything Lorelei thought she knew, all the relationships she treasured — her own identity — is brought under the harsh light of inquisition. Lorelei finds herself struggling to cope with a new life, a life that to her seems shattered beyond repair.
Heartfelt and provoking, K. Syrah’s “Carry Me Home” shows that there is more than one kind of strength, that a soldier can take many forms, and that sometimes the most vicious battle we fight comes from within.
I’m an Explosive Ordinance Disposal technician. I handle anything that goes boom. In the Global War on Terror, my job has become an integral part of keeping friendly casualties low and ensuring that the enemy’s weapons are rendered ineffective. I will destroy the Improvised Explosive Device. Save the day. Be a hero. Go home alive. Maybe do a happy dance on my way out.
Continue Reading Chapter 1
We soldiers spend most of our careers training; we’re gnashing at the teeth to use that training in the real world. Then we deploy, thinking that finally we get to go the super bowl. We’ll finally get to be fucking war heroes! Then we realize that the only real war heroes are the ones who come home draped in an American flag.
Continue Reading 2. When the World Went Silent
I’m standing at attention. I’m here, heels clicked together, feet at a perfect 45 degrees, hands in fists at my side, and shooting pain arching up my right thigh. I’m here because I’ve been kicked out. I’ve given them my youth and taken on one of the most needed jobs in this bloody War on Terror, and for all that work, these assholes are kicking me out.
Continue Reading 3. I Prefer to Stand
I didn’t know what I had expected. I was still on crutches, my leg was still the series of bound wounds that required constant changing, bandaging, and re-bandaging. I didn’t wear my uniform, though I suppose I could have. Instead, I wore a black suit, with a black turtle neck and a red scarf on my shoulders. Charles’ red scarf; I had claimed it as my own. I couldn’t let it go.
Continue Reading 4. Casey and the Funeral
In the pit of my stomach, there was this sinkhole that was eating up everything left inside me. I looked down at the fork and saw the crimson out of the corner of my eye – I was still wearing that stupid scarf. It would be bad form to throw it off and burn it on the stove.
Continue Reading 5. In Grief
I had called Wilder because I had no one else. I was lonely. I just wanted someone who knew me, not as a cripple, but as what I used to be.
Continue Reading 6. Crossing Waterfalls
He was holding back something. There was a restraint in him that I was beginning to dislike. I remembered Wilder, the one from a year ago, who would slap me against a wall and his hands frantically finding the curves of my body before having to force himself away from me.
Continue Reading 7. Passing Time
We stood there for several moments, as the minutes ticked by in silence.
Eventually he sighed and sat on the bed, reached out his hand, palm up, offering peace. I took it in mine, his hands still warm, and we lay down, holding each other as the night came over us.
Continue Reading Carry Me Home — 8. Physical Therapy
They say that the body has no memory of pain, so every hurt sensation feels like it’s the first time it’s ever hurt; it prevents us from becoming accustomed to it, so that pain can never dull.
Continue Reading 9. Getting Up
He seemed like he was doing the most gentlemanly thing, and I was getting used to him doting on me. Sometimes I was bitter, feeling like I wasn’t given the opportunity to be self-sufficient, but who was I kidding? I couldn’t walk. In fact, I haven’t been self-sufficient from the day that they told me that Charles was dead.
Continue Reading 10. Crawl-Walk-Run
I looked at the faces around me; the mothers who grabbed their children’s hands and pulled them along, telling them not to look. I saw the men who looked, unperturbed, or almost inconvenienced by my scene, the sand, the diesel, the burned out truck, the radios, the sound of boots on sand, and the soldiers mechanically responding to a crisis from rote memory.
Continue Reading 11. Seeing Ghosts
He only came out at night, when Wilder would sweetly sleep beside me, his arm laying over my shoulder, as I stared into the darkness of the other room, through the open bedroom door. I could see him in the black shadows, always hazy at first, thinking that I could blink him away. Then as the seconds ticked by, he’d become more real.
Continue Reading 12. Red
I could hear footsteps, other than my own, echoing from beyond the trees that lined the paths. I knew who it was lurking in the shadows, the same blue eyes that lurked in the darkness, crawling like a specter, silencing the birds, and turning the trees so that it’s branches pointed their spindly fingers at the woman who should have been dead, as she walked by.
Continue Reading 13. Cross The Bridge
How much more broken could I be? How much darker could things get? Could they be darker, considering the fact that the ghosts seem to have drifted away, like smoke being pulled away by a cool breeze. Yet there felt like there would be so much more, like I was standing on a path, and seeing my destination, a distant point in the horizon.
Continue Reading 14. Memorial Day
