They stand guard one last time, these flattened soldiers corralled by glass. Their limbs are stone, more barrier than warrior. At home, my brother lays a green plastic man at the top of the stairs, perched to look out over the rest of the house.
At a bar in a gully of parking lots, fluorescent lights sprouting from the ground, we tuck into a pocket at the counter, more comfortable with our backs to the unknown language. Se Captain America. I can feel his Italian on my back. A man with hair slicked away from his face lays a double-layered shot on the counter, red, white, and blue.
Standing at the top of a staircase, it's a straight shot to the rest of the group as they, in a clump of striped shirts and fluorescent backpacks, descend to dinner. From here, I can hear their pigeon calls and laughter. I can see the way we look to the rest, how we travel in a pack of sound, in a beat of constant movement.
It's new, seeing me through him. It is rapid sketch, he says, dangling it in front of me. You want? You smile. I look like her, like the one before, like an Italian that's left him behind in a town of walled ruin and, for some reason, I am okay with this. She is hard lines, deep scratches, rough behind her head in a shadow of blue ink, this girl he has memorialized on graph paper beside the cash register.
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