work.

You want me to write about war. But I can't. I don't know what war is. The word is foreign in my mouth. Here's what I can tell you.

On July 24 my brother went to a meeting with a worker's coalition. He didn't come back. Instead he was found dead in a ditch next to Route 78, laceration along his ribs, a bloodied face, and his class ring missing. There was an unmarked car outside our house for months. Mom was devastated, but you couldn't tell. Dad just kept going to work. There wasn’t a funeral. That just happened to people like my brother.

I wondered. All younger siblings do when their brother is mysteriously killed. I went to the Coalition Meeting House, but it was gone--or at least not where I was sure I would find it. There was a homeless man sitting against a building across the street. He was watching me. I asked him, “Where did the building go?”

He said, “They took it.”

I gave him the twenty bucks in my wallet.

I don’t know who they are so don’t ask. Nobody knows who they are. So I went home.

There was no obituary for him.

Herman Gates, my brother’s boss, spoke about the loss of workers on the News Hour, but not my brother. Just costs. How much it was all worth. How much my brother’s work was worth. How much my brother was worth.

I went back to work, too.

There is no war here. There are no...you called them soldiers. We work. Life goes on.