Before He Came Home

The basement smelled like old cardboard when we found them—

photographs in a shoebox, edges soft from handling.

His face young and serious, squinting at whoever held the camera.

Sand behind him. Not the beach kind.

His jaw locked the way mine gets

when I'm trying not to say something.

I've seen him old. Seen him in his chair,

slippers, reading the newspaper. Seen him become

a man made of routines and silences.

But this—this man in uniform, lean and particular—

he's looking at something past the camera.

Something the lens couldn't hold.

The date on the back in my grandmother's handwriting.

1944. Twenty-three years old.

I am thirty-one now. I have done nothing

but exist comfortably in my own life.

He was there. Whatever there was.

He came back different. They don't talk about the different.