An image of a man.

 

An image of you, crying.

 

An image that reminds you of high school, when Tommy H taught you what it was like to be beaten and your father taught you what it was to be a man. When both the actions were the same.

 

An image that could have been taken the day you decided to become a man and your father failed to say goodbye when the army came to take you away.

 

An image showing what could have been any one of your fellow soldiers. After they, too, decided to become men and assumed that meant power, meant violence, meant killing.

 

An image that could have been taken any day during your two years of duty, the sargeant just out of shot, yelling about how emotions are poison and maybe you’re not cut out for this life after all.

 

An image that you didn’t send home to your parents. One that was replaced with drone shots of the villages you had gutted and enemies you were holding captive, hoping it was your father who opened the letter.

 

An image that captures your reaction when they no longer needed you to fight and you hid out on an old friend’s sofa rather than facing your parents.

 

An image that repeated every night when the memories would not leave. On a different friend’s sofa, hoping to find yourself at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

 

An image that you wish had been taken after your mother tracked you down. A way to capture the moment you broke down in her arms and she held you the same way you remember from childhood, when you were so far away from failing to become a man.

 

An image that you returned to after your first evening at group therapy. Staring at your own crying face in the mirror and wondering if the group leader had been right. Whether you could still be a full person without the aggression, the anger.

 

An image of you a month later when you opened up to the group for the first time. When one of the other men hugged you with arms full of understanding and you let it all out.

 

An image of you, crying.

 

An image of a man.