We Survived the War. Now We Survive the Night.

Iwoke to the sound of my own scream. A soviet apartment block had collapsed in front of me, five stories of concrete folding in on itself. In the dream, my ex-girlfriend was inside, gone in an instant. Then I was back in my bed, chest heaving, staring into the stillness. None of it had happened. But nightmares don’t need to be real—only possible. That is enough.

That afternoon, I was at a cookout with my old platoon sergeant from Iraq. Smoke drifted from the grill and clung to our clothes. He leaned back in a lawn chair, a beer sweating in his hand. Six deployments—Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq. Wars that chewed men up, then faded into history books no one reads. I asked him quietly, “Do the nightmares ever go away?”

“No,” he said. That was all. He didn’t need to explain further. He knew my story