WAR Poem: what my dad once said, by Zac Yonko

He said it once,
standing in the garage,
his hands smeared with grease
from the lawnmower engine
he was coaxing back to life.

“I served because I never want you to.”

The words hung in the air
like the smell of cut grass and gasoline,
both familiar and strange.
I didn’t ask what he meant,
not then,
too young to untangle
the weight of armor and duty
from the man who taught me
how to tie my shoes and check my oil.

Later, I learned about the tanks,
the monstrous steel behemoths
he commanded,
rolling across a landscape
that must have looked more like
a nightmare than a country.
I imagined him there,
a helmet too heavy for his head,
a rifle slung over his shoulder
like an afterthought.

But what I couldn’t picture—
what I still can’t—
is the silence between battles,
the quiet hum of fear
pressing against soldiers’ chest.
The letters home,
each word a cipher,
meant to say everything
and nothing at all from them.

When he said those words to me,
I realize now,
he wasn’t talking about patriotism
or sacrifice,
but the hope that I’d never have to learn
what it feels like
to weigh your life against the life of another.

He didn’t want me to carry
the sound of shells
in my ears forever
or dream in shades of khaki and smoke.

So I listen now,
to the spaces where he doesn’t speak,
to the pause in his stories,
the moments he hands me a wrench
and shows me how to fix something
he hopes I’ll never have to break.