But their roots went deep, bound them together in a collective memory. With each new arrival, they pieced together more of their past, built more of their future.

Now that I know, I can’t unsee her girlness. The turned curve of her nose, the slant of her cheeks. How her eyelashes curl up just so. It would be a mistake to think that any of these things mean she’s fragile. The very fact that she’s sitting here, eight days after being stabbed, is testament to that.

She’d been trained to survive many things: starvation and bullet wounds. Winter nights and scouring sun. Double-tied knots and interrogations at knifepoint. But this? A boy’s lips on hers. Moving and melding. Soft and strength, velvet and iron. Opposite elements that tugged and tor Yael from the inside. Feelings bloomed, hot and warm. Deep and dark.

But this... her... she’s more than warmth. She’s fire, a soul, a name. Mei Yee reverbs through my head, my veins. Lodges like shrapnel in the far reaches of my chest. More powerful than a pound of C-4. Uncontrollable.

People were more than crooked type and swastika-stamped documents. No number of bullet points and biography facts could pin the soul behind the eyes.

There was an end. There is a beginning. They’re one and the same.

Are you you without your memories? If not, who do you become?

Pang, pang, dummkopf heart.

It never made sense to my young mind, how a hurt from so long ago could keep a man from walking right. Stay with him for the rest of his life. But now that I am older, now that I’ve fought my own wars and fired my own guns, I understand.

The world is wrong. I’m just doing my part to fix it.