Over social media posts

courageous Iranian protestors

Russian draft defiers

my partner and I discuss desensitization to war.

My early childhood raw awareness

compared to her sheltered world of

benign pranks

beach vacations

shocks her.

When US tanks shook houses along our street,

rolling towards Berlin

fell the wall

my mother brought me to our stoop, we watched.

At mention of

Kuwait

South Africa

Rwanda, Kosovo

my parents didn’t change radio stations

instead patiently explaining

neoimperialism

apartheid

genocide

over dinner.

In kindergarten, my mother admonished

show Adam’s mother extra respect:

she swam across the wide Mekong River

her baby on her back,

while a dictator’s soldiers

shot at her

from the bank.