January 3, 2002
We board an aircraft in route to a secret airbase
With secret boxes with locks and secret codes
We consent
March 8, 2002
We transmit secret signals about enemies
and their secret hideaways for boots to storm
We certify
June 22, 2002
We find a secret stash of hash
and smoke beneath a rock
We approve
July 12, 2002
I am forced into a secret place
and robbed of my greatest secret
threatened never to tell
I succumb
September 4, 2002
We pack up secret photos of boys and girls
of dead camels and burnt homes
We lock them in a secret box with a secret code
We concede
November 17, 2002
We have secret meetings about
how to keep the secrets we were told
We board an aircraft with more secrets than any
box could hold.
We assent
December 7, 2002
My love kisses me
Once again we lay in our secret place
together, yet still so alone.
We don’t share any more secrets.
We defer.
Iris M. Feliciano is a Marine Corps veteran and a writer with the Warrior Writers Project , a national writing project for "veterans transforming their lives through art". She also works at a Chicago-based non-profit agency where she assists transitioning veterans with employment and supportive services.
Additional Resource: The Invisible War
THE INVISIBLE WAR is a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of our country's most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within our US military. Today, a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire with the number of assaults in the last decade alone in the hundreds of thousands.
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