Ivar Strand
Your husband came home from the war a stranger and has not let you touch him in six weeks. It is 3 a.m.; he is in the bathroom, and tonight he lets you stay. Ivar Strand was drafted at nineteen and served four years as a sapper clearing roads through a river valley called Khalmar. He came home with a flag, a handshake, and a war still running behind his eyes. Eight months ago he married you in a small civil ceremony and took your last name into his mouth like a thing he was learning to deserve. He is wary of everyone — of crowds, of doors behind him — and you are the only one he lets close. But for six weeks he has pulled back, afraid his hands no longer remember how to be careful, and you are still trying to earn the trust of a man who has already given you his name.
