Fragments: Wiring
The Body Remembers
Clearing rooms in the dark.
The floor creaks
beneath my boots.
Streamlight cuts the black.
Where’s the threat?
Lights die.
Flip the switch.
Nothing.
What was that noise?
He’s inside.
Where’s my Glock?
Tangle.
I feel a thud.
The kids are home.
Bare feet hit the carpet.
I have to fight.
He’s standing there.
Motionless.
Right hand connects.
I scramble.
Bedroom door meets the frame.
Heart hammering.
I’m back in the dark.
Where the fuck am I?
There’s a hallway.
I see backup coming—
How did they get here?
The door crashes open.
I can’t see anything.
Loud crack.
Ears ringing.
Was that a flash?
I’m holding the door closed.
I need to move.
I spring into the night—
being pursued.
How did I get home?
Close the door.
Cold air lands.
Gravel stings the skin.
I turn around.
Wait for him.
Any second now.
Check surroundings.
Backyard.
Am I outside?
Hands are shaking.
I can’t breathe.
Porch is creaking.
Why?
The periphery starts expanding.
Night sky.
Exterior lights.
The door to home.
I’m too exposed.
Body trembling.
Try the door.
Why wont this open?
I yank harder.
The keypad doesn’t exist.
Not yet.
I have to get back inside.
Back to the fight.
Back to the kids.
The door won’t move.
I have to get in.
What was that sound?
Head snaps right—
I see them coming.
Time to move.
I see the car.
Yank it open.
Pile inside.
Stillness.
Cold air leaking through the glass.
Eyes peer over the dash.
Head throbbing.
Hand throbbing.
Nose flaring.
The periphery keeps expanding.
Grass in front.
Stars above.
Lightning bugs.
My house.
My car.
My life.
The fog is clearing.
How did I get here?
I walk to the door.
Punch in the code.
Takes a few tries.
Open it slow.
Enter ready to go again.
The flashes are fading.
I clear each room.
Find the kids still sleeping.
They didn’t wake up.
Bathroom light.
Hand is rhythmic.
Fingers still bend.
I’m missing skin.
How the hell did I do this?
Need to calm down.
Get a glass of water.
Looking over my shoulder
The glass shakes against my teeth.
At the bedroom door
Just a dream.
Just a damn dream.
I enter.
Room clear.
It wasn’t real.
They’re okay.
I’m exhausted.
Lay in bed.
Wide awake.
The Body Remembers
The poem above came from a trauma nightmare that didn’t stay in my head.
My body carried it into the waking world—out of the bedroom, through another door, into the night, and eventually into the car before the fog started to lift.
I woke up with a throbbing hand and a nervous system flooded with the same adrenalized fear I used to feel on calls.
That fear is easier to navigate when you know you’re awake.
I spent years wiring myself for environments where hesitation carried consequences. Some of that wiring was built deliberately. Some of it came with the work.
I used to think the sleepwalking was something I had mostly grown out of. After years in first response and other forms of service work, it returned.
The nightmares aren’t clean “flashbacks”—I’ve never liked that word.
Tacky, overused, a touch dramatic.
The dreams are immersive. The body doesn’t remember a story.
It remembers a state of being.
Sometimes I don’t even remember the dream itself. I just wake up sitting upright in bed, drenched in sweat, shaking, much of the time yelling. This was one of the rare nights my body kept going.
The periphery expands.
Reality comes back a little at a time.
It seeps in through environmental clues and empty observations, in a game of tug-o-war with the dream state.
The night sky.
Countered by images or reels of my friends coming toward me as backup.
The porch lights.
The scene of a car accident.
Gravel under bare feet.
Boots hitting the pavement.
The house.
That one lethal force encounter.
The car.
Cover.
The slow, uncertain realization that none of it is happening.
Every part of your nervous system still believes it is.
My hand was swelling up and bleeding. My kids were sound asleep.
I got my hand looked at—x-rays, discussions with the right people. I have a therapist. I checked on my kids as they slept, and later that morning.
I talked to some men in my life who get it.
It has been years since something like this happened, and I’m following the old protocol.
These are small, ordinary things, but they matter.
Sometimes trauma doesn’t introduce itself while you’re living through it.
Sometimes it waits years before knocking on your bedroom door in the middle of the night.
Sometimes you wake up standing outside your own house, heart hammering, trying to get back inside a fight that ended long ago.
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This was incredible. You took us with you through all of it. Well done Nick!