Aim small. Miss small.
They said it like gospel
on the range where sand mimicked dust storms
we’d later crawl through.
The trick is not blinking—
not when it’s a paper target,
not when it’s a boy with a blade too dull to fear.
Identify the enemy.
Easier said when uniforms are different,
when the child doesn’t smile
before dropping the satchel.
Harder when your own hands
start to look foreign
after too many red sunrises
and the quiet that follows them.
Do not speak of dreams.
They don’t issue dreams.
Just rations, rounds, radio static.
But I keep dreaming of the dog I shot
because it barked too close.
I wake up to its whimper—
not the scream of the woman who ran after it.
There is no rule four.
Just the space between orders.
The long flight home
where no one makes eye contact.
The medals they pin like stitches
on a wound.
And the VA wall says Welcome Home.
But no one tells you where to go.
Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with seven published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, CON-SCIO Magazine, Kaleidoscope, The Easterner, Daily Trust, and more. With an MFA in Creative Writing, Gloria was a reader for Barely South Review. She is also the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize and a finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024 and ODU 2025 College Poetry Prize, both with honorable mentions. https://glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.
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This was great. Haunting.