Valerie Came Home From Deployment to Find Her Twelve-Year-Old Daughter in Intensive Care
Jeans.
Socks rolled in pairs.
A toothbrush still sealed in its plastic sleeve.
Eleven dollars in a ziplock bag, mostly ones, with a rubber band wrapped twice around them.
My hands stopped on the toothbrush.
That isn’t a bag for a night at a neighbor’s house.
That’s a bag for not coming back.
Under a paperback at the bottom was her phone, in a cracked purple case.