A rocket shakes the tent as it is sent crusading through the air, disturbing the otherwise silent night with its intense velocity. Not surprisingly, anymore at least, this disruption that will undoubtedly last until the wee hours of the night sends a calmness through my body as I listen to it whiz through the air. I wait patiently for the next, as they reload in a place I’ve never seen, but know all too well to exist.

Tomorrow I will wake before the sun comes up and join a team of men, most of whom were very recently boys, on a mission. We will take a group of personnel to a location outside of camp, searching along the way for threats the enemy may be working on as I lie here on my cot with my American flag raised beside me and ten other women asleep in the same four walls of canvas.

This is my life.

I grew up on a small street in a small town, which I watched develop into something architecturally remarkable and complementarily busy. The remarkable nature of the structures was not in the sense of beauty in design, but rather a shock of sorts at the realization that someone would think to design a three bedroom house with no garage in the suburbs. I still remember the first time I heard that the single lot of land, grass I crashed my bike on a hundred times after veering off the gravel road and cut across on my way to my fourth grade classroom, would soon be replaced by twenty-seven houses. It was a ridiculous idea, there was no way anyone could squeeze half that in there.

They did. Twenty-seven new families moved into my neighborhood, into homes with no garages and grass I couldn’t fit my lawn mower onto without scraping the poorly cemented rocks off the driveway. Each house is an exact replica of the one beside and behind it, paining me every time I dared evaluate where I resided, even more so after studying architectural magazines and learning even the slightest bit about art and creativity.

Naturally the busyness came with the houses, as did the weekend garage sales and the crazy old lady who seemed to be using her front driveway as storage for the living room furniture, which interestingly enough changed every week after the presence of a moving truck and a group of young, shirtless men parading about. That seemed to cease shortly after the squad cars kept parking outside her house, but I never asked any questions when I saw her, even after I watched her back up out of her driveway straight into another parked car and then simply drive away.

The lot these houses were built on had belonged to another crazy old lady whom I also never spoke to. Her name was Martha, and the only thing I ever knew about her was that she lost her mind one day, years after her husband had passed, and took a loaded shotgun to the Logan’s house, while Mr. Logan was away on a fishing trip, as old retired people often did around that part of the world, and held Mrs. Logan hostage for hours while she argued with her sister on the phone. Apparently Martha fell asleep and Mrs. Logan was able to call the police.

Martha died a few years later and her son sold the property to a family who owned a bunch of chickens, who soon resold it to developers and probably snickered with maliciousness as they cashed their check. I never saw them again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those chickens are now living in a mansion with a private swimming pool.