These poems were not written at a desk. They were carried for decades—through conscription, through deserts, through the long return that never quite ends.
The first section follows a soldier through combat and its immediate costs—landmines, snipers, the small moments of grace between firefights. The second traces what survival leaves behind: the triggers that ambush ordinary life, the rooms that stay empty, the choice to stop fighting. The third turns outward to witness other wars, other children, other bodies in the rubble.
These are spare poems, stripped to bone and image. They do not explain or justify. They record what the hands did, what the eyes saw, what the mind still carries. A child in giraffe pajamas beneath settling dust. A pencil stub worn down like the soldiers who used it. Sunflowers growing in minefields because no one can make them stop.
Afterburn is what remains when the fire has passed—the heat that persists in the body, the images that return without warning, the grey streaks that started the day a friend's eyes fixed on the sky. This is a book for anyone who has wondered what soldiers bring home, and for those who already know.