text: “These sessions are built on you being honest with me.” She says with her fingers gripping each other over her bony, arthritic knee, her eyes behind thick rimmed glasses balanced on her nose and whenever she moves she smells like sand. Everywhere smells like sand. There is sand in his shoes every day when he walks to work. His dog chews the sand at the bottom of the water bowl; his wife takes her tea with a splash of milk and half a teaspoon of sand. If he gave her an honest answer, he feels guilty because he knows he shouldn’t be drinking on the job. But if you were me, he thinks, you’d do it too, he thinks. He always thinks. Always wants to tell her that there’s no shame in taking the edge off of a job that shows just how far down those edges drop. He’ll never not be at work. Try being honest when you do what I do, he thinks. See how far that’ll get you. His wife’s bouquet was coated with sand the same way her veil was encrusted with it, weaving its way into the carpet as she walked barefoot across the desert. Across the church to the altar. All of it, sewn in between her teeth. Her kisses burn now. She's not the sea now. At night now he sleeps alone, with a pillow that smells like sunscreen and covers that sting him like sandpaper. He doesn’t want her to feel it the way that he does. But he leaves sand in boot prints on the landing and hand prints on the mirror wherever he goes for her to cry over, later. There’s a scratch to his voice like gravel. Like sand. The next day he walks to work with the very same sand that coated the inside of his throat during the night crunching between his toes. So dehydrated he eats it in a hope he will find something within it all that makes him feel as though what he eats in the night will grow his muscle like it used to. Just like normal. They walked across the sand in walking boots and through the sun in fur coats. Sand sticks to hot sweat. Sand sticks to hot, dishonest sweat. There’s always a Jeep just ahead of them kicking up sand in their faces that sticks to the creases of their foreheads and the inside of their eyelids. It makes it so difficult to see anything other than an orange shower of desert and hear anything other than the roar of an artillery Jeep. Makes it difficult to hear the gunfire. “Jacobs is down!” His friend is lying there in the Iraqi sand breathing like a maniac. He sees the sand on the other side. Try being honest when you do what I do. See how far that’ll get you. “Jacobs, listen to me.” He holds his friend’s hand tight against his chest. He whispers a prayer. He doesn’t believe in God. Not anymore. “You’re gonna’ be okay,” he says, “Jacobs? You hear that? You’re gonna’ be alright.