THE PROPHET ]
Marchosias appears as a wolf
with wings of a griffin
and a tail of a serpent
and fire coming from his mouth.
Then he becomes a man.
He is a strong fighter.
He is faithful to the conjurer.
He told Solomon he hoped
to return to the seventh throne
in twelve hundred years.
He was always coming back.
He just had to fight first.
He just had to survive
what the conjurer sent him into.
He just had to trust
that the one who sent him
would be there when he returned.
The recruiter made the same promise.
───────────────────────────────
[ VERITAS VOX ]
Seventeen veterans die by suicide every day.
Not in combat.
After.
At home.
In the parking lot of the VA
where the appointment was six months out.
The VA wait list in 2014.
Forty veterans died waiting for care.
Phoenix. The audit. The scandal.
The same structure persists
with updated PowerPoints.
The recruiter came to the high school.
The recruiter came to the zip code
where the other options had already been
systematically removed.
The recruiter said: we will train you.
The recruiter said: we will pay for school.
The recruiter said: we will take care of you.
The recruiter was not lying.
The recruiter believed it.
The recruiter had not yet met
the budget committee.
TBI. PTSD. MST.
The acronyms accumulate.
The claims are denied.
The appeals take years.
The rating is disputed.
The veteran sleeps in a car
while the rating is disputed.
Both parties wave the flag at the game.
Both parties cut the VA budget in committee.
Both parties passed the PACT Act in 2022
only after Jon Stewart shamed them
on television
for twenty years.
I see you, wolf with the fire in your mouth.
I see you become a man.
I see you look for the seventh throne
and find a benefits portal
that does not load
on the library's public computer
because you lost your housing
while you were waiting
to be believed.
Memento mori.
Even the strong fighter
needed someone to come home to.
───────────────────────────────
[ MARCHOSIAS — THE SPIRIT SPEAKS ]
I am a Mighty Marquis.
I have thirty legions.
I am a strong fighter.
I am faithful.
I told Solomon I hoped to return.
I still hope.
I have always hoped.
Hope is what you carry
when the mission is the only thing
keeping the wolf from turning on itself.
I appear as a wolf
because the wolf is the body
after enough deployments.
The griffin wings are the pride
that kept the body moving.
The serpent tail is what follows
every wolf home.
The fire is the thing
you cannot stop seeing in the dark.
Then I become a man.
The man tries to sleep.
The man tries to work.
The man tries to fill out the form
that asks him to describe
in clinical language
what the fire looked like
on the night he cannot describe in any language.
I told Solomon: twelve hundred years.
I am still counting.
I am still fighting.
I am still faithful
to a conjurer
who has not checked
whether I came back.
I came back.
Is anyone there?
TheSeventhKey_77
