א י נ ע א מ ח ל א
ה Ha Lachma Anya
This is the Bread of Affliction
A Blue Bandana at the Door
David Weisberg
In the desert outside Tucson, someone showed me a GPS device with a category I did not know existed: RHR— recovered human remains. There have been enough deaths that the desert has its own abbreviation.
We walked to one of those places. A small wooden cross marked where volunteers had found the remains of Prudencia Martin Gomez, eighteen years old, from Guatemala, who died trying to reunite with someone she loved.
We left water there. Just water.
On a nearby tree, a bandana once bright had faded, worn and barely recognizable.
And then- something small and strange- I realized I had packed a blue bandana that morning.
I tied it high on a branch so that anyone passing might see it and know: there is water here.
When we drove away, the water we left behind sat waiting, flanked by a blue bandana and a small wooden cross.
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