I flattened Edina’s ball of paper. Dawn light outside the window was like spring water on young skin. No one would shoot from the hills today. The photocopy was printed in thin ink, grey-toned and pink-lined, like an old fresco. She had written her telephone number across the top. The women in the photo were together waiting. See them. Arms bare. Hair rough-cropped or tied or tangled and falling into their eyes. Hands clasped across their own arms over breasts and rubbing tears from cheeks. See them together waiting, flesh against flesh, waiting women, waiting for bread, for water, for children, for old men. They had once been war-waiting, and they had survived. You would not abuse stone like that. Now they were peace-waiting. Ready to speak.

The photo caption calls them war victims. They make their necessary migration, guided not by winds or magnetic poles but by uncoded weather inside their bodies. They are grief-touching skin to skin, over there, see one woman holding another, and there in that corner, see a young woman squatting to the floor, head dropped between her knees. Flesh once soul-stripped but alive and not silent. They do not seem to be victims to me. See us. Listen to us.

Justice is a long-feathered, cragged old mountain bird. Under its stiff wings lice crawl, laying and hatching in the worn cycle of revenge and fear. In the ancient first language, the priestess prayed to her goddess and she was tossed by war, torn by thorns, and exiled. No home, no temple, she was left with nothing but her song under the light of planets. Verdicts do not undo waiting.

He knocked and I let him in. Of course. Now we were alone, not the tender and curious young strangers who first met in an unheated room in Paris, but two people who had not seen each other for many years.

He said, Our daughter must be eleven now.

You know about her?

I got the letter you sent to London.

You never answered.

He looked down.

Why?

His back was to the window. Over his shoulder I saw distant lights, people awakening across the valley.

He asked, Have you told her about me?

We sat facing each other on two single beds.

Of course. Since she was little. I told her there was a war. I said someday we would find you. Anyway, it was easier to raise her without you.

Goat.

I had no choice.

No.

Are you with Edina?

She only lets me be her friend. War destroyed everything.

How destroyed?

She lost everything. Her husband. Her father. Friends. Her life.

You still love her.

She does not love me. She has never loved me.

He reached for my hand.

I said, We have been up all night.

We used to like all night.

The warm flesh of his palm on the back of my hand.

I said, I still like all night.

I wanted to know things about him and I wanted to touch him as if we had never been apart. I wanted truth but I did not want pain. I could not have truth without pain.