What Fiction are you reading this week, May 27, 2018?

[TexasProgresive]

16. And thank you for remembering, lest we forget.

My Father came home from Europe after the war uninjured in body but not in spirit. He was only begining to heal as he approached 80. My grandmother cried, "I sent them my sweet boy and they sent back a monster."
Fortunately the sweet boy wasn't completely taken over by the monster. I knew my father as a loving and generous man, but could be scary sometime. The fear was dispelled by his obvious love.

the sonnet-ballad
Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917 - 2000

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover’s tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won’t be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.”
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/sonnet-ballad