THE LEGACY OF SILENCE

The silence did not begin with meTo my sons, you who never received the whole story.Just as I, my father and my grandmother never received the whole of ours.There are moments that etch themselves into the body rather than thememory. In the summer of 1970 I am standing in the schoolyard in Hageby.The asphalt is warm; the smell of dust and grass hangs heavy in the air. Iam eighteen. She is seventeen. We stand side by side, yet the distancebetween us already feels insurmountable.