The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry

Anniversary

Anniversary Lying in bed late, you will sometimes read to me about a past war that obsesses you; about young men, like our brothers once, who each year become more like our sons because they died the year we met, or the year we got married or the year our child wasborn. You read to me about how they dragged their feet through a green maze where they fell, again and again, victims to an enemy wily enough to be the critter hero of some nightmare folktale, with his booby traps in the shape of human children, and his cities under the earth; and how, even when theysurvived, these boys left something behind in the thick brush or muddy swamp where no one can get it back—caught like a baseball cap on a low-hanging tree branch. And I think about you and me, nineteen, angry, and in love, in that same year when America broke out in violence like a late-blooming adolescent, deep in a turmoil it could neither understand nor control; how we marched in the rough parade decorated with the insignias of our rebellion: peace symbols and scenes of Eden embroidered on our torn and faded jeans, necks heavy with beads we did not count on 164 for patience, singing Revolution— a song we misconstrued for years. Death was a slogan to shout about with raised fists or hang on banners. But here we are, listening more closely than ever to the old songs, sung for new reasons by new voices. We are survivors of an undeclared war someone might decide to remake like a popular tune. Sometimes, in the dark, alarmed by too deep a silence, I will lay my hand on your chest, for the familiar, steady beat to which I have attuned my breathing for so many years. i65 ...