The Croat girl doesn’t care any more.

Nothing lasts past tomorrow.

 

It’s in her paintings:  bombs like teeth,

tanks in the hills, the taking of scalps,

a collage of mass graves,

father running guns in the Caribbean ,

brother dead, mother in an asylum.

 

And yet, as she leads me by the hand

to see the Caravaggio’s in the Uffizi,

her eyes go from shadow to shine

in one and a half lives.

 

 

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