Tears of Amber

by Sofía Segovia

Once there, Janusz imagined, they perished of loneliness and cold, because he’d never seen a word that could survive alone, without anyone welcoming it into the warmth of an ear; without being threaded into a chain of sisters preceding and following it, giving it meaning, and with meaning, life. These, cast into the wind, were wasted words, sent to die like a common soldier.

Life is a mystery: that was the conclusion he’d reached during his long hours of plowing stories into the wheat. It lets you know where you are in the present, but never where you’ll end up. A single step is enough to change everything, he thought.

War transformed everything: a country into pieces, a village into a nucleus, a nucleus into a family, the family into the entire universe.

Pride, like a beloved dinner set or inherited mirror, loses its value when you’re fighting for your life.

Now that he saw clearly, Janusz knew that he’d never be able to forget what the German people had done to his own. But a morning like this, with an innocent girl who’d always loved him, reminded him that, while there was darkness, there were always faint rays of light for those ready to see.

Winter is not a good time to die, but in that winter that was so dark, so long that it clawed back any promise of spring, nor was it a good time to live.