ABSTRACT
for AkhmatO'Va Hearing of you, I never lost a brother though I have, never saw a husband to war, though I have, never kept with my father the emptiness of his hands, my mother the dying of her womb. Return: husbands, sons, fathers return. Many with both arms, with dreams 101broken in both eyes. They try, they try but they cannot tell us what comes back with them. One more has planted his hoe in my heart like an ax, my farmer uncle slain by thieves in the night, burned down with his house, buried, dug up to prove he was no dog. He was no dog. You, who lived in your pain until it grew its own face, would have left all this like a monument in a field. Your words would have made a feast of what ate you. Sit with me. No one has left; no one returns.
