“Retrospective”

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by Michelle DeRose

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One Sunday in June 2017
a brim against the mid-day sun
to protect his patchy skin
my father described that year’s ritual.
Always a faithful scribe
each Sunday he reread the epistle
sent fifty years before to his wife
and two kids from his tent in Vietnam
where he treated snakebites and inoculated
children, severed limbs, sutured
wounds, extracted bullets, and assigned time
of death until, at week’s end, his thoughts
and time turned spouse-ward, to ask
if the five year-old corrected his backward
6 and b yet, if the 2-year-old still trailed
a blanket behind her everywhere,
willing the flimsy blue sheet into one
for himself, to scroll along the silky edge
and find the spot that smelled most like home.

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