The Seat They Couldn’t Take
My name is Zariah West. I’m forty-two years old. I served twenty years in the United States Air Force, and when people hear that, they imagine ceremonies and flags and stories with tidy endings that fit on commemorative plaques.
They don’t imagine the limp.
They don’t imagine how cold weather transforms your lower back into a landscape of broken glass. They don’t imagine waking at 3:11 a.m. because your body remembers things your conscious mind has learned not to discuss.
I don’t talk about the crash outside Kandahar. I don’t talk about burning metal or the way desert sand infiltrates everything—your teeth, your equipment, your prayers. I especially don’t talk about the Silver Star I received afterward. It lives in a small velvet box in my dresser drawer, like a paperweight for memories I prefer not to examine too closely.
