🎖️ You're Already Here

(as told in Silverstein Mode)

You’ve got too many stories
shaped like holes,
too many ghosts
with no assigned roles—
no headstones, no medals,
just whispers and names
you mumble alone
when the world plays games.

Too many jokes
with blood in the punch,
too many lunches
you skipped for a hunch
that maybe you’d finally
feel full again,
but the ache just smiled
and said, “Not when.”

You speak a language
that doesn’t translate—
where silence is loud
and memory’s late,
where missions don’t end
with a bugle and cheer
but with dust in your boots
and nobody near.

But listen close—
not with your ears,
with the place where you hide
the heaviest years:

Each of your stories
isn’t a trap.
It’s a map.
Not back into fear,
but out of the black—
a compass made
of fallout and fact.
For you.
For the crew.
For the ghosts still stuck
in the loading screen
of a war run amok.

You carried them all
like bombs that still tick—
soft in your hand,
silent and quick.
You kept them from blowing,
you kept folks from crying,
but maybe it’s you
who’s been slowly dying.

So maybe—just maybe—
it’s time, dear friend.
To write.
To speak.
To let the war bend
into syllables,
into rhyme,
into lines that refuse
to call it "just time."

Not to relive it—
but to rename.
To carve new truth
from the old shame.
To take back the breath
they stole from your chest
when they raised their flag
and laid your dead to rest
under slogans and silence,
while you were still
dusting Baghdad
from your windowsill.

But guess what?

You did it.

You're already here.

The first ghost’s gone quiet,
its voice now clear.
It found your page,
it found your pen.
It found a way to live again.

So line ‘em up—
those weightless friends.
One by one,
begin again.

Not under flags.
Not under forms.
But under poems
that weather storms.
With rhythm.
With grit.
With the breath they forgot—
but you didn’t quit.

Because healing,
dear brother,
ain’t forgetting.

It’s remembering—
out loud—
without regretting.