atonement in a porta-shitter

four years ago today,
a porta-shitter.
103 degrees.
me.
standing.
piss coalescing around my boots.
sun stamping the blue green stall, leaking through rivets; polka-dotting white hot my face.
put shit paper on the seat,
but urine soaks through.
another layer.
still damp.
sit down anyways.
m-16a2 rifle across my lap.
sticks to my thighs.
8am, steaming already.
"fuck this place," i think.

light up a marlboro medium, attempting to stifle the stench.

it works a little.
the porta-shitter is covered in graffiti:
-"jamie gives good head"
-"ftc "(fuck the corps)
-"for a good time contact the colonel's wife"
- explicit drawings of well-endowed men (has someone been been spying on me?)
-a detailed illustration of a vagina circa 1975
-various slurs
the wind steals hollow and carries away the smell.
light drops in.
plastic contorting, bending.

the air feels warm through my fingers.
my hands dry and calloused, and for the first time in many years i look down at them.
veins like roots, travelling beneath tanned hide.

cuticles torn, mean looking.
my palm:
smooth thick skin. i wonder what the lines mean?
scars.
cracks.
a man's hand tells a story.
just look sometime.
a script exfoliating with time.
but i sit for a good long time. i dunno why. but i sit.
paralyzed maybe.
compelled.

i think of many things. some desperate, mostly pragmatic.

this is my lot in life. ive accepted that.

if i survive another week in this shit hole, i head home.

if i get killed, i get killed.

simple as that.

but if i do survive, i will do things.

finish college;

get a girl;

buy a house with chickens, plum tomatoes and a big fig tree.

a car and drive to the ocean.

climb down the cliffs to the tidepools and watch the tide come in.

but if i die, hopefully it is not a painful death.

burning alive inside a hummer.

disemboweled by a 7.62

yes, hopefully a rocket does not come down right now and detonate and i get killed by boiling hot shit and piss and melting porta-shitter plastic.

yes, hopefully its a big mother fucker and it just turns me into a pink mist.

i will hear the whirrr and a flash and there goes cpl mandia.

but the then the smell returns.
piss forms yellow ponds around my boots, flies, heat.
i finish my shit and exit.

spark up another marlboro medium. inhale, exhale. i squint at the sun, follow the smoke into the day.
walking back to my hooch, i pass an iraqi civilian worker.
he wears a nike t-shirt and new balance tennis shoes. he smiles at me. one of those subservient day laborer smiles-fear tinged.
he looks familiar.

they all look familiar.
but i hit my hooch.
think the bunkie is gone, but i dont remember. i retrieve a sketch pad and pen.

4x8 inches of white paper. i write down a few words.
i draw a man.
iraqi.
from the first War.
he holds an ak-47.

appears from behind a building.

every Marine's weapon dialed in on him.

just like the movies, but this time he drops the ak-47 and turns himself in.

nobody dies.

then that smile.

tinged with fear.

we put a burlap sack over his head and load him onto the bed of a 7-ton.
"fuck saddam," he shouts through his burlap sack. "fuck saddam!"

we all laugh.
yes.

fuck saddam.