Recon
The jungle closes like a thought unfinished
A parenthesis of leaves trembling with the weight of words refused to name itself
A sergeant rises in a jeep's half-light
A hand resting on the cold geometry of the machine gun
A monument to a violence that never arrives
A promise deferred
A sentence without its verb
The road is a narrow corridor of breath
Every branch leans inward, listening
Every shadow rehearses its own disappearance
Then, not an attack, but the idea of one
A ripple in the undergrowth
A murmur of bodies that may be bodies
Or only the memory of footsteps that have not yet been taken
Figures move like contradictions
Appearing only to unappear
Their outlines trembling at the edge of meaning
The team steps down, the boots touch earth
As if entering a sacred argument
The sergeant turns the gun, not firing
Only tracing the absent of a target
Drawing invisible lines through the air
As if underlining a text that has not been written
A flare blooms, a red impossible flower
And for a heartbeat, the world is measurable
Shapes and motion, intentions without injury
The choreography of a conflict that refuses to wound
Then the light collapses
The jungle inhales
The moment folds back into itself
No one is harmed, no one is claimed
The ambush dissolves like a dream
Mind ceases to be material
The convoy moves again, carrying with us the echo of an event
That both happened and did not happen
A trace without a burden
The future already remembering itself
