The Night I Don’t Wake From I haven’t slept in three rotations. Not real sleep. Not the kind that mends anything. I drift into the ambush, not knowing if I’ll claw my way out. The same sand. The same blood. The same radio hissing names that don’t get answered. I flinch before the blast now, like muscle memory’s trying to warn me that the world’s about to tilt again. It always tilts. Kamryn’s voice— the only tether to this side of the wire— can’t reach me here. Not when the walls sweat diesel and the ceiling drips with men I couldn’t save. I walk perimeter in my own home, hand grazing the corners like clearing a room. No weapon. No armor. Just a heartbeat louder than gunfire and the ache of knowing I’m still here when others aren’t. I scream into the pillow so she doesn’t hear me die again. And when the dark laughs, I laugh with it— not because it’s funny, but because I’ve forgotten what silence used to sound like before the war installed speakers in my skull. This is where I live now. In the breach. In the memory. In the breath between trigger squeeze and impact. And every morning I check my watch— not for time, but to prove to myself that I made it through another goddamn night.