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DORIANNE LAUX Staff Sgt. Metz Metz is alive for now, standing in line at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear and buzz cut, his beautiful new camel-colored suede boots. His hands are thick-veined. The good blood still flows through, given an extra surge when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam caught on his bottom lip. I can see into the channel in his right ear, a narrow darkness spiraling deep inside his head toward the place of dreaming and fractions, ponds of quiet thought. In the sixties my brother left for Vietnam, a war no one understood, and I hated him for it. When my boyfriend was drafted I made a vow to write a letter every day, and then broke it. I was a girl torn between love and the idea of love. I burned their letters in the metal trash bin behind the broken fence. It was the summer of love and I wore nothing under my cotton vest, my Mexican skirt. I see Metz later, outside baggage claim, hunched over a cigarette, mumbling into his cell phone. He’s more real to me now than my brother was to me then, his big eyes 78 ✦ DORIANNE LAUX darting from car to car as they pass. I watch him whisper into his hands. I don’t believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings, its oiled and moving parts, the whole of him standing up and raising one arm to hail a bus, his legs pulling him forward, all muscle and sinew and living gristle, the countless bones of his foot trapped in his boot, stepping off the red curb. DORIANNE LAUX ✦ 79 ...

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