We wait for the ICE train to Frankfurt on metal benches.

My hand on the curve of his bicep, his hand in his coat pocket.

A cold clear morning, and our breath-smoke funnels the air. 

 

***

 

Bad Nauheim is a spa town in the Rhineland. Its salt springs are used to treat heart and nerve diseases.

 

***

 

On our walk through the Kurpark, the brown gurgle of a thermal fountain

sent him back to war. Just a sad memory, he said. I didn’t ask what.

 

***

 

Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst came to Bad Nauheim each year with his mistress. In 1931, he met Mussolini here; and from here flew to Berlin to meet Hitler in 1934.

 

***

 

In the garden beds, tulips are raising their green temples.

 

***

 

While in Iraq, he sent me a picture of what he’d done: a man’s face split open, his skin like plum skin folded over his black hair. A hand on the pebble-and-casing-strewn street, a fly on that hand. I don’t know why he sent me that. I don’t think he knows. He never did it again.

 

 ***

 

At night, I finger the bullets like marbles under the skin of his shoulder.

 

 ***

 

Hearst did "much good" in advising Hitler to stop his persecution of the Jews. Afterward he spent his life trying to erase the name: supporter of the Nazi cause.

 

***

 

While deployed, he looked me up on the internet, sent an email with a picture of he and his daughter on a fishing boat. He said he’d never stopped thinking about me, even though he’d married another woman. I had.

 

***

 

After his divorce, we dated long distance for eight months. I sent care packages filled with lollipops for the Iraqi children in his village. He sent back sweat-creased notes. He had two kill letters: one addressed to me, the other to his daughter, to be delivered in case. I was dying to know what was in mine.  

 

***

 

Here in Germany, he can’t help but scan the rooftops for snipers, finds himself walking backwards: pulling rear detail.

 

***

 

Sex after a year at war is not as good as one might think.

 

***

 

In Cologne, I bought a black and white postcard taken after World War II.

In it, the bridge to the train station is severed,

its metal arcs twisted and braking the flow of the Rhine.

The Gothic Cathedral is unscathed in the background. 

On the stone banks, a couple sits with their arms around each other.

The caption: Lucky to be alive.

 

***

 

In Al Anbar Province, a boy blew himself up while burying a bomb roadside. Later, a dog carried away his liver in its mouth.

 

***

 

Perhaps he sent me the photo of his kill because I don’t agree with the war. He wanted to know if I could love him anyway. I don’t know how, but I can.

 

 ***

 

In the taxi to the bahnhopf, the Beatles song “Yesterday” plays

and I think: I’m riding to a train station with my high school boyfriend.

Twelve years apart is trying all its tricks against us.

After not touching all morning, he rests his forearm on my thigh.

Willows line the street, whip by, and through their bare branches

a church spire, which were it spring, I would not have seen.