I smiled.
“Still Eli.”
“Good name.”
“You said that the first time.”
“I’m old.
I repeat myself.”
He sat beside me, his brown coat folded over the chair.
The faded tattoo showed beneath his rolled sleeve.
For most of my life, I had thought strength looked like that tattoo, or a uniform, or a man who could walk into a room and make another powerful man turn pale.
I understood it differently now.
Sometimes strength looked like an old witness refusing to forget.
Sometimes it looked like a nurse asking one quiet question and waiting for the answer.
Sometimes it looked like preserved messages, documented injuries, and a closed hospital curtain.
And sometimes it looked like a woman holding a six-pound baby, hearing a man tell her how his family worked, and finally answering with one word.
No.
