He sat in his living room, watching on TV as the President lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The memory returned.
He was a child in the woods cupping stream water into his hands after bloodying his fingers eating berries. Dirt caked his clothes and hair. When the soldier approached, he burrowed into the underbrush. Then he heard English—the American kind. When the soldier discovered him, he was crying.
Two years later, the war ended.
He never knew the soldier’s name. But every year when he watched, he prayed it wasn’t him in that grave.
Faye Rapoport DesPres is the author of five books, including “Soul to Soul: Tiny Stories of Hope and Resilience” (Huntsville Independent Press, Dec. 1, 2023). Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, and one of her stories won a Best Microfiction 2023 award. Faye lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Website: fayerapoportdespres.com. Twitter: @FayeRapoDesPres. BlueSky: @fayerd.bsky.social. Mastodon: @fayerapoportdespres@c.im.
The Centifictionist 
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