Author’s Note:

Nearly sixty years ago, I wrote this piece in the uneasy quiet that followed my return from Vietnam. My family had moved away from the little Northwest Wisconsin town I suddenly found myself living in alone, my fiancée was preparing to marry someone else, and the only people who understood the weight I carried were other veterans fighting their own private wars. I felt unmoored, unseen, and unsure of who I was supposed to be now that the shooting had stopped.

This poem came from that darkness — from a twenty‑year‑old trying to make sense of the emptiness inside him when the world around him no longer felt familiar.

I am putting this poem by itself this drop, as I believe its solemnity deserves to stand alone.

On the Finality of Emptiness

This place—empty.
Dark. Black.
Hello? Anyone there?
Can you help?

I’m confused.
I don’t know where I am.
My mind—empty.
I don’t know how I got here.
Can you help?

I cry out. I scream.
No sound.
No screams?
My voice—empty.

My God!
I know I breathe.
I do?
Heart pounds—So loud!
Body trembles.
Wait...
Am I breathing?

My breath—empty.
Where am I?
What is this place?
So dark.
So small.

Trapped.
Why don’t you hear?
Why don’t you help?
Do you know who I am?
Do you care?

You are empty.
Who am I really?
I don’t know.
God, my head—pounding.

My breath—short.
What’s that?
Music?
Solemn?
Sacred?
Playing... for me?

I hear muffled cries.
Voices—familiar.
Someone is out there!
Stillness.
Emptiness.
I feel nothing.

Movement?
Shifting weight.
Side to side.
Where am I going?
I know I’m here for a reason.

Why?
Not sure.
Do you know?
Tell me?
Voices again.
Voices so empty.
Who are they?
So familiar...
What is this restraint?

Am I in—a box?
Let me out!
I’m trapped.
Motion?
It has ceased.
Something falling...
on the box?

I feel breath no longer.
Can that mean—
Can you tell me?
Can you help me?

I am at rest.
Am I at peace?
I hear one last sound.
The sound—so empty.

What can it mean?
I am not sure.
A whisper . . .

Requiescat in pace

Author’s Note:

Reading this now, I still feel the fear and confusion of the young man who wrote it — a twenty-year-old caught between the war he had survived and the life he wasn’t sure he could return to. The emptiness in these lines was real, but so was the strength it took to give that emptiness a voice. Time has softened the edges, but the echo remains, a reminder of how many battles are fought long after the uniforms are folded away.

Now that you have read the piece that a much younger version of the man I am today once wrote, I ask you to read the poem one more time. Read it slowly. Take in each stanza. And think of it as the voice of a twenty‑year‑old, freshly home from war, unsure of what the future would bring — but painfully aware of the demons standing before him.

Thank you for indulging me in a bit of forlorn melancholy. With Memorial Day having recently passed, I’ve found myself caught in a tide of nostalgic reflection, and this poem — written so long ago — rose back to the surface.

If the piece touched you in any way, I invite you to drop a note and share your thoughts.