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I dreamt I took a bullet to the chest
And fell in a poppy field in Kandahar,
And poppy blood soaked through my Kevlar vest,
And with each final breath, I called out, "Sarge?"

No one responded. Nobody called my name.
And when I tried to use my GPS
Full-skirted poppy blooms leaned in to frame
A dream more powerful than opiates:

I dreamt that on a wall were posted pics
Of me and my fiancée smoking hash
In my backyard, back home. A thousand clicks
On "Like" and "Share" had caused a system crash,

And my fiancée scrolled by pixel light
But was not looking at her iPad's screen,
For its wet crystals gave her second sight—
A dream, wherein my dream became her dream—

And she could see the poppy field my chest
Muddied with blood, the dust of Kandahar,
And, already pinned to my Kevlar vest,
Blood-wet, a Purple Heart and Silver Star.

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