THE WEEKLY POST

I REMEMBER CARLOS (from"If We Survive")

I remember Carlos

a quiet man/boy who rarely spoke

in the early morning

freshman English class

I taught at the junior college.

He often entered late

but I remember his smile and bright eyes.

His perceptive mind

was a sponge, absorbing thoughts, ideas,

reading books to expand his horizon,

to be different from his friends in the barrio

where he had grown up.

He had left high school at seventeen

to work construction with his uncle.

In mid semester he told me

he was leaving school,

his girl-friend was pregnant.

They were going to be married

and he had volunteered

and would be going to Iraq.

Years later, I saw him in a restaurant

seated with his wife and child.

He thanked me for the times

I’d helped him and for the books

I sent him, but in his eyes

I now saw the quiet anger and the fear,

knowing the horror of which he was capable.

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