Warrior

I stumbled on a picture of you, of when you were healthy, here. You look beautiful and sombre and certain. You look like you'd have been different from the others. You look like you'd have lent me the strength to stand my ground.

I was told, years after, that I looked like you. I think now that those who said it must have missed you dearly and knew that you'd been different from the others, too. Other genes have had their way in me and I don't look beautiful and sombre and certain like you did. All I have of you is a picture now.

I have kept safe the only memory I have of you. I had accepted the state of you without question, without emotion. Without fear, too, I think, but I must have been, afraid. I don't remember anything else from that day or time. I was a child among weeping adults. I was a child taken by the whiteness of the cloth they'd wrapped you in, the whiteness of the cotton they'd put in your nose.

I was six then.