 This year in Asia Minor. This year in Asia Minor, in an inland sea, the water rises. A woman goes on taking what she can carry, flight beginning on a night without moonlight, rain uncertain, and the distortion of that last tree. The black sea fills. Luck hangs on the fall of a veil. A woman turned away or allowed to go on. A child hidden. The hour irregular, unsteady in the low call of darkness. At those checkpoints where we wait, there is always a risk. Our disguises falling into disbelief. The passage to the Aegean Sea opens. A woman walks now in the shadows of the oldest stone beasts. A U.S. destroyer deploys from Norfolk. We cannot separate all of these parts. We cannot make them come together. We no longer know who we were.