by Claire Kearns
they told Leo
stand still
stand straight
stand silent
they gave him a number
a file
a line in a ledger
a place in a war that would remember everything
except him
they took his breath
measured it in rations
in orders barked through other men’s mouths
in the cold arithmetic of command
they said
good
that will do
file him away
they built monuments
but not his story
never his story
Because Leo didn’t fit
he wasn’t
the kind of dead they could polish
he carried too much
truth that bled through the neat edges of their history
institutions hate that
they like their grief orderly
their sacrifice symmetrical
their heroes quiet
Leo was none of that
Leo was
the thing that kept surfacing
at the wrong times
in the wrong voices
so they buried him again
not in earth
that would have been honest
they buried him
in the polite cough of archives that skip a page
in the way people look past
when something is too heavy to carry properly
they called it process
called it policy
what it was
it was silence
a big
institutional
fuck-off silence
and still
still
he refuses
because memory doesn’t obey them
not really
it leaks
through families
through stories told too late at night
in the anger
in the grief that doesn’t behave
in the voice that says
no
****