by Monica Vereana Williams

Created on: May 23, 2008   Last Updated: January 31, 2009

The sun shines through the dark brown bottle glass. I can see the wasp buzzing around inside the bottle, climbing the sides halfway up then falling again. I watch as he climbs over and over, relentless in his pursuit of escape.

The warm southern breeze clips my hair across my face. The smell of salt water and sweat lingers in my nostrils and covers the skin of my lips. Goosebumps crawl over my body. I see the sun's rays through the kaleidoscopic images in my eyelids; the bright orange and green dances through the skin.

Trixie's and Nan's voices fight over the noise of the surf. The crashing waves barely allowing the lilt of girlish laughter to filter our way. A smile creeps over my lips. So nice to be away from the city; away from the offices, and the hands and eyes of men.

"Do you feel it, Trixie?"

"Feel what, Clara?"

Never mind. It is my feeling to keep. I feel the release, the relaxation, the letting go. How do I manage to slip so quietly away from now into the darkness of yesterday?

My mind slips and the sound of the surf turns to gunfire. Daddy wakes up in the night in screams and cold sweats. Behind my eyelids I can see the cold breath in the air, the dirt, the blood. Deep inside my head I can hear the screams of pain, of loneliness. Soldiers wanting mothers, wanting wives, and wanting comfort from the wounds and gaping isolation. I can feel the damp in my boots. I was not there, but in his pain I can imagine that I feel the desperation. How did he get there? How did we all get there? Now he is stuck in this place of pain, of horror.

Daddy sits in the kitchen with other men, all drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. They do not know I'm there. To these men it is bragging on nostalgia, but to us it is revelation. They are telling the truths that he couldn't speak to mother; telling about the horror and the boys.

Really, they were only boys. So many, the names are listed on the monument. Their lives reduced to font too small to see. It is tiny print for the dead, so we need to get up good and close. We stand closer than the enemy ever got. Their names fill a stone the size of our living room. But they were so young.

Daddy retells the story of teaching one of them to shave in a trench in November. How the razor was so cold it kept sticking to his skin. Don't lick the fence posts. The men always laugh at this story, but mother sits silent.

Mother is in the kitchen very early in the morning. She sits with her head in her hands, a cup of tea stone cold. She is crying

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