Photograph by Dorothea Lange

There was nothing, and nobody, left to save.

It hurt to look at the emptiness, but it was no good turning away, or closing our eyes; because the absence was also inside us.

So we walked away. What else was there to do? We packed our suitcases and put on our coats. Laced our best boots onto our feet and hoped that they would carry us far enough away that we would reach some finer, better place.

You carried the baby, and I walked ahead with the boy. Sometimes hand-in-hand; sometimes with him sleeping on my back. His too-long legs dangling from my hips. We were not the Von Trapps, smiling and singing as we crossed the mountains. Those boots marked our progress: they gave us blisters, then grew soft. The seams split, the laces broke, the soles peeled away.

At night, we camped in abandoned houses, or open fields. Lay looking at the stars. Sometimes you would tell me what you remembered: stories about what we had had, what we had lost. And I said nothing, or almost nothing. I lay by your side, unable to hold your hand. Unable to believe in anything anymore, saying only:

I know. I was there.