We were gathered one afternoon in the Coopers’ tiny living room. The second oldest, who couldn’t have been much more than sixteen, offered me a puff on his cigarette.
We peered into tidal pools, kneeling to get our noses up close, to watch creeping snails and huddled mussels, skimming our fingers over carpets of barnacles, stuck like superglue to the rocks.
People died here…for a cause many of them didn’t fully understand or believe in. Young boys of 17, no older than my high school students, enlisted thinking the war would be some grand adventure
The woman jaywalking toward my side of the street is slight, with stooped shoulders and a bent back. Her wiry neck branches into collarbones so sharp that they resemble a wire hanger…