What Wasn't Passed Down

I found him in a shoebox in the basement.

Not all of him—just the part that fit.

Discharge papers creased from folding,

folding, refolding until the creases became grooves.

A photograph. Him in 1944, uniform,

the corner bent white from someone's grip.

I'm holding the bend he made.

My mother said he never talked about it.

Never. Not once. As in, sixty years

and it was the only language

he refused to speak.

The crease is where he held it.

That's the only thing I know for sure.

I'm thirty-six years old

and I'm just now holding the corner he bent,

just now noticing the white

where his thumb was.

This is as close as I'll get to knowing him—

not the war, but his grip on keeping it.