Excerpt from Fishers of Men

The Last Photograph

In the small photograph my mother has her eyes closed. I am shapeless, rather pale probably two. There is snow. My sister has a sled. It is only a year before my mother will abandon me to be beaten, brainwashed. For years I was sure that she despised that shapeless creature until I looked carefully and realized I’d been buried in the snow up to the armpits. She was sitting there, eyes closed that thing that had been her daughter already a part of the landscape, her mind already gone.