Sitting for her portrait, the light of language leaps from her. I’ve not wanted to live for as long as I can remember. The world turns and shadows wash across her face, until she stands guard over a mass grave in Bosnia, when she was still a man. The smell hit me more than the sight. What we are capable of. What animals we are. And I am one of them. I am him. He is me. We are them. They are we. The world was sandbags and concertina wire and sleeplessness.

Even after the transformation, something as much as love felt impossible, and the light contracted to a single point, a handful of pills, then dark. Dream beyond sense. Dark beyond dream. And then... Waves of afternoon light on the ceiling. God, you really hate me, don’t you? And in response, Sargent’s voice echoing across the decades. Fill the sandbags, soldier! Eighteen inches of dirt is all we need to stop a rocket!

She rose, made coffee, leashed the dog, and let him outside. Something there was that would not let her die. Light falling alike on concertina wire, dirt, a parking lot, a dog sniffing a crabapple tree. Of all the bodies, this one was hers, hers and hers alone, to honor and to hold. Something there is that is his no more.