Edited by: Maggie Rosenau
They talk about the war, her kids. Whispering a few simple and metaphorical words as if it were just a bad poem they did not like.
That’s how bad poems can be. How bad wars can be.
What would surprise them anymore? How can this mother keep her young children safe? By cropping her dead son’s body from pictures?
Such is life, she says. The one who every day was surprised by the stars.
Children gather around a TV where a film plays in a foreign language they do not speak or understand it. They gather here even when the scenes don’t interest them.
Outside the window, there is an old tree that gestures as if it were crying for help. Its leaves fall away.
They understand and feel this gesture.
The wind hurt them just as it hurt the tree. They watch, then turn their sight back to a dormant fireplace.
I lost an amazing son. He knew how to chop firewood.
That is all that has happened, the mother says.
