He told me stories about Thomas I had never heard.
How he snored.
How terrible he was at cards.
How he kept one photograph of me folded inside his shirt pocket.
How he once traded half his dinner for paper so he could write me.
I gave Walter things too.
Stories of Thomas before the war.
Before uniforms.
Before fear.
The boy behind the football field.
The teenager who once climbed onto my parents’ roof because I told him I didn’t believe he could.
The boy who couldn’t dance but insisted he could.
In those final months, Walter and I slowly gave each other back the versions of Thomas that the other had never known.
Sometimes we spoke about him.
Sometimes we didn’t.
Some mornings we simply sat quietly with coffee.Anatomy
Walter’s health worsened.
He became thinner.
His voice weaker.
But he told me something shortly before he died.
