Postcard to Joseph from Normandy – 4 June 2013

I saw you standing in the cemetery this afternoon, marble skin stretched over the six-point star of your skeleton. I saw your double cowlick, your slightly stooped shoulders, far too far from where you should have been. I lurched at you, collapsed, breathless, at your feet, tried to ask why you were here. I only saw it wasn't you when he turned, shook his head, spoke in a voice that wasn't yours. He told me his name — Felix. I licked the spiky name that was miles away from the soft, round whisper of Joseph. He was Felix and you were safe and I could breathe again. But he — he'd been trapped here for years, lonely but for the stones on his shoulders and the pair of wilted roses nipping at his heels. He'd left a girl at home, he said she looked like me. I wonder if, before he left, he'd play her records of songs she'd never heard, or songs her father had played when she was young that she'd forgotten. I wonder if he'd pour her glasses of raspberry lemonade, if he'd wash the dishes in the sink while she read at the kitchen table. I wonder if he told her he loved her when they were alone in her violet bedroom, if he kissed her goodbye in the station before he boarded his train. I don't wonder, as they did, if I'll make it home safe. I wonder, though, if you'll be waiting.

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Shelby Dale DeWeese is a poetry editor for Fractal Literary Magazine and for Teen Ink Magazine. Originally from a town with no name on the Kentucky/Tennessee state line, she now lives and studies in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon, Dead Snakes, and other publications. She can be found online at http://shelbydaledeweese.wordpress.com.