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90 Stop-loss Absolutely, I agree. It’s what we all want to do. Unless by we I mean Thanatos, but I just asked, I do not mean Thanatos. I mean you holding your daughter’s hand, thinking darkly, despite yourself, to when you’re dead and she’s old and alone. That’s a loss you want to stop, of optimism, the present tense, of just being with her as you wait for the bus, watching her watch a blackbird that doesn’t have to go to school. The man beside you in fatigues, camouflaged from Wednesday, holding his son’s hand for the last time before he returns to shooting at people, being shot at in a war he thought he was done with, I mean him: he wants to stop loss. What a beautiful phrase for the army to support. In it, I hear that we’re through with grenades, the violent enterprise of steel, we’re on to the new war, the war against the cannibalism of war. Hurrah for us, for you, fighting the impulse to see the end in everything, hicok pages i-120.indd 90 1/7/10 3:23 PM 91 this spring day, the giant steps of the bus she has to climb, literally, as you would a mountain, not thinking, for once, she will fall, but feeling, for an instant, she will make it, without ropes, in a pink dress, laughing. hicok pages i-120.indd 91 1/7/10 3:23 PM ...

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