The Quarantine Chronicles, Day 62

DAY 62: Vietnam was my Vietnam.

Not HIV/AIDS or the more recent

pointless wars, I grew up with

nightmares about Vietnam, it

consumed my teen years, it was

the monster in my closet, the

huge black shadow over the boy

-- today, in 2 months, in the U.S.

(the Vietnam killer) the number

of dead from the horrible virus

surpassed the 58,000 of a 10-year

war -- my God, my God!

If Vietnam changed my whole

life -- the protests, marches

loneliness (of being anti- in a pro- 

town), the fear (of my 2-years in 

prison, expected but not accepted)

if I'm still scarred 50 years

later like all men my age who

went or didn't, then what will

happen inside this generation
of the covid-war, the climate-war

the scarred for life who might

still live in 2100? 

What part of the soul is their Vietnam 
War? that place burnt with a white-

hot iron, cauterized but unbear-

ably painful, hypertrophic scar tissue 

never to be soft again -- a 60-day 

Vietnam -- the horror,

the indescribable horror.