By Natasha Rao

In these barracks, night speaks another dialect.
No longer does he fall asleep to the smell
of boiling milk or his brother breathing
cigarettes in the dark. He doesn’t yet know
the ways his body will change for a war
that doesn't happen in this country
he will soon leave. From now on he will grow
like sharpening. Tonight he is too eager and
cannot sleep, this last moment before they strip him
of childhood, have him believe the true war
is inside him. Tonight, he is still a boy of sixteen
who dreams of being a pilot, not to flight
but to soar, titanium wings fluttering
through the blameless air. He brushes the blanket,
this fleshy creature with no edges, not yet bruised
into the solemn duty of manhood.

Poet Bio

Natasha Rao is the author of Latitude, selected by Ada Limón as winner of the 2021 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Nation, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, Narrative, Rattle, and elsewhere. In 2021, Rao received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. See More By This Poet