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As a child her favorite color
was black,
an omen I guess.
I remember her in
Ms Mason’s art class
crouching over a sketch pad,
her hair hanging
in thick clustered tendrils.
Now, near the end of her death march
she steps carefully across
the stage at graduation,
a victim of chemical warfare,
bald and bony and ashen,
smiling bravely at the
harsh flash of the
commemorative camera.
Who would have thought
her frail form could
muster such majesty?
That such a young girl
could model for her elders
how one might die,
bravely, beneath the buzzing
of early June’s whispered promises?