Hey Heru,
I write this for you as a tribute. When I am aware that my vision is acute and I can see the tapestry of this life outstretched like so many unpacked fibers lied upon the loom of my future, you are with me. When I stride forward without consideration for the would’ves and could’ves… when I see the traumas as skinned knees and the deaths as milestones, I am with you.
This is a letter to my future self that is now, this is prayer to the falconer of my soul. I am moving steadily from that small space where we were a hurt thing that hurt things, reciting the satanic verses of self-limitation under muffled breath. I am the kid that settled for a GED, and atoned with a JD, for the sake of what could be.
This is a letter for the one who saw far. When we were a meek scrappy thing in Mosul, and then in Fallujah, you gazed above the event horizon of all the violence to the place where we are now. You tilled the fields and turned them over with no promise of what the new season would yield. I was the stone that builder refused, and you were the level and the mortar by which each of our hurts could be affixed, brick by brick to a zenith befitting your vision.
This is a letter for one that now sits astride his wisdom, surrounded by beautiful progeny that he can send back to his daughters as grandfathers do, whenever he sees fit. This is for the etched lines around those eyes, and the deep marks around the mouth, emblematic of the smiling done long after the work had been done. This is written to you in tribute…
I used to see you in the mirror when I was scrawny enough to see my own heartbeat through my ribcage, muscular and tall. I only hoped I would be able to be you, and that hope did turn round (as hope does) and beckon to me through the pain and struggle until I realized in stalwart fashion that I had no choice…I am you. I look back from where you are even now and I see what must be done to be where you are, and I am grateful.
I thank you for being the one that looks at my scars and smiles at the memory of how they got there. I thank you for lording over me when I though about quitting, screaming frothy mouthed obscenities at me when I laid down to die. I thank you for letting me feel the sun on my face whenever I survived something that brought me close to death…my future self.
This letter really wasn’t as epiphanel as I had supposed it would be, and I am glad that you are there in the arc where the light hits the land. I am glad that I see further each day and disregard the things in my direct footfall, it assures me that I will be you some day…Heru.

Eternally you,
B