THE WALL

My heart was young and inexperienced. I know that
I could not be close to any Vietnamese. Caring was not
part of my psyche. It would destroy me.
No love existed.

Preserving my honor as I came in country
failing miserably, I experienced the people and touched
them on the other side of the wall.
No love existed.

Never revealing who I was, I was not interested in their
souls.  They were just acquaintances accompanying me
through a warm, moist dream dangerously peering over the wall.
No love existed.

Perhaps they are all dead now, but I am still here, and
they are still with me. Staring back through paper
windows stuffed in a filing cabinet,
No Love existed.

Thirty years have passed, and love is alive, but where did
that year go, and why didn’t I cry?
No love existed.