May 1946 after a two-week romance in Cologne after two weeks at Buchenwald offering succor to survivors as a second lieutenant WAC nurse the smell of evil on her clothes ash sifting through the air like charred innocence she and Bob an aviator sailed the Atlantic a champaign bottle crashing skeletal on the ship's bow they settled in her hometown to begin a life after the war’s death.
They found their first GI Bill house northeast of the city where sun rose where the shadow of trees waited to grow beneath moon to stars starshine kindling as dusk dawns and children were born a daughter another daughter a son Bob flew commercial she a public health nurse administering TB shots to the city's Black and Brown have-nots a sea away from those she tended who wore stripes hanging half-mast on stick figures more marrow than flesh.
Then Bob left as men do she alone a single mom bent like a gallows over bills stacked higher than caskets her life a gyre spiraling through the town’s undulating valleys but the children grew like the city diadems glowing in the pulse of postwar pride and they moved southeast a better school district following the city's river as it wended like hope riding to tidal rise.
The children achieved college careers anointing their classrooms with her humanity and she supplemented her black and white life painting pastel rivers that rushed and bridges that connected the city's labyrinth caring for grandchildren showing them the color within art contrasting her holocaust’s gray.
And she moved once more southwest toward the setting sun and died to complications from the evil she inhaled decades ago and trees turned from green to red to brown leaves skittering like birds flown a 21-gun salute celebrating her life in the graveyard across from a school's joyful playground tears wetting plants to growth and seasons spooled woof to warp like the quilt of her life's cycle January 2007.
About the author
Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Crack the Spine, Vermilion, In Parentheses, and more, plus his chapbooks Once Planed Straight; Viral; and the soon to be published The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety from Spartan Press.
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What a wonderful vignette, yet chockful of remembrances, however bittersweet. A long, meaningful life elegantly encapsulated.
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