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The wallpaper in my childhood room
was covered with them: fighter cubs
and dive bombers—planes in V-formation,
like the ones that made the windows rattle
the day my father carried me upstairs
to the roof, lifted me to his shoulders,
and pointed out the squadrons rumbling
through the sky. I flinched at the echo
of rifle fire. "Twelve-gun salute,"
my father explained. "The war is over,
honey.
We can keep the lights on
all night long now, if we want to."
That
night, after my mother switched off
the light, I lay in the dark, surrounded
by airplanes—silver wings banking
across the dormered ceiling—and wondered
if babies really came from heaven.
Not
until I had children of my own
did I picture my mother during the war,
a beauty in short skirts, hair swept up
in a fashionable bun, designing
submarine insignia by day—sitting at night
in dark movie houses, pregnant with me,
watching newsreels of soldiers
goose-stepping through Europe.
Tonight,
as jet planes draw chalky trails
across the sky, I think about the women
of my mother’s generation, shutting their
eyes
to the flickering footage of fat-bellied bombers
bulging with cargo targeted to fall
over blacked-out cities, planes strafing towns
where children lay trembling in the dark,
waiting for the all-clear sirens,
waiting underground for the end of war.
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