Burlington County, New Jersey

This is the ultimate weapon: the ability to not be there—to cease to exist in a world, no boots on the ground, to know that nothing will be secure again because we are not here. My father’s eyes are my eyes: sensitive to sunlight and with thin retinas—they poked at it to gauge the tiny measurement—eyes drifting to elsewhere and then snapping back like a tightened zip cord. When they told him he could never fly, he never did: belly to the ground shooting rifles at targets shaped like shadows—material that bounces back after every bullet, figures that do not know the word pierce, outlines that do not understand any of this. The world will never be secure because he is not there, not telling the world that he is here, not telling the world anything. A man wrote about his memory once, about his refusal to get sick: will over science, the denial of the common cold. Quiet one day, talkative the next, not a career guy, he said, strange, thick glasses, shook. I wanted to find this man, same age as my father. I wanted to find him on the base and shake him to his core—to remind him the will and the eyes are mine now—that you don’t make promises of flight that you can’t keep, that all things here are secure.

Brian Oliu (http://www.brianoliu.com) is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  Work has been published in Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, Sonora Review, and elsewhere.  His collection of Tuscaloosa Craigslist Missed Connections, 'So You Know It's Me' (http://www.tinyhardcorepress.com/so-you-know-its-me/), was released in June by Tiny Hardcore Press.