Night Vision

by George Hodgin

The sky is inviting when it is green.
I once counted twelve shooting stars in a five-minute span while kneeling on an Afghan plateau waiting on a helicopter.
To see when others can’t.
With the flick of my head and the power of a AA battery, I became Superman.
I could watch through a green lens as other Supermen silently entered windows, climbed aboard ships at sea, or walked through the mountains.
I had a front row seat to a show that the human eye wasn’t meant to see.
My purpose was clear when everything was green.
Green hides the color of blood, it makes eye contact impossible, and man does it light up the night sky. 

****

George Hodgin is a former naval officer and current student at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He was commissioned as an officer in the Navy in 2009, after earning a BA in Economics and Mandarin from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead-Cain scholar. His hobbies include surfing, fly-fishing and hiking with his young dog. He and his wife currently reside in Palo Alto, California.