I Came Home Unannounced After Four Years Abroad and Found My Wife Starved and Shaved in the Backyard. My Mother Said She’d Brought It on Herself. I Didn’t Yell

She was shaking.

I held her as carefully as I have ever held anything.

“I’m back, honey,” I said into what was left of her hair.

“I’m back.

I’ve got you.”

She could not answer.

She only said my name, over and over, Damian, Damian, Damian, as if she had been saying it in the dark for months and could not stop now that I was finally there to hear it.

I will not dwell on the details of what they had done to her body, because she is a person and not a wound, and because she would not want to be remembered kneeling on that concrete.