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26 My Tenderness My sister says she is moved that I am so tender with him. Why shouldn’t I be? He didn’t plan to die like this, his arms thin as wire, nearly transparent, his eyes deep in his face the way he must have looked fifty years ago, when he walked out of the death camps and went home; he is still astonished he lived through that long impossibility. Now that he has learned to love life again to lose it again. Why shouldn’t I touch him, my sorrow turned to muscle while I lift him to his feet, my voice ordinary, as if it is ordinary to die accompanied by tenderness. ...

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