He didn’t like the scars that were tattooed over his body.
To him, they were reminders of a time spent fighting.
But I saw them as marks that revealed more.
Lines etched deep by the ravages of war.

I watched him as his barren eyes gazed at the ceiling.
Dull and lifeless without the sparkle of his youth.
Could he forget the violence, agony and suffering that he had seen?
He was trying to cope in his own way –
a way that I did not understand.
He was trying to add some color back into his life,
but it was all just ashen shades of gray.

His world was changed, but mine was not. 
As I laid near him, I reached over
to touch his hand,
to try to connect with him,
but he pulled away from me.
“What are you thinking about?” I whispered in his ear.
He didn’t reply. He was in his own world.

I tried to reach out to him many times,
to the person that I knew from before.
A person whose energy was contagious.
A vibrant man who was full of life.
But that person seems gone now, left in a foreign land.
His emotions were turned off like a switch that had been dimmed.

I am lying next to a stranger –
a stranger in my husband’s body.
The war had left a shell of a human being
A man devoid of any feelings.
Would I ever find the husband that I lost?

I fear the answer, the dismal truth.
I’d like to believe every instance to the contrary.
The war took my husband from me.
His scars run deeper than the lines on his skin.

Silence passed over us in what seemed like hours.
Not a word was spoken. Dead silence.
He sat in bed breathing heavy with anxiousness,
his hands clenching the sheets,
his eyes tightly closed.
Was he reliving the nightmares from war?

I am living with the aftermath now.
He is not the only one with scars.