I am only beginning to understand how seasons affect me.
 
Winter. Snow beating street people into obedience. How mothers 
held back from stepping out in discreetly ornamented shoes and
thin nylon socks.
 
This is the way I count years: the winters we had fire and the
summers we erased because we were in another place.
 
I am told I was five in 1971 even though my birth certificate states
I was born in 1969. The elders count on their fingers. They have 
done it for a long time.
 
It was winter but not the kind of winter they were born into.
They were wearing hand knitted woolen sweaters. I was wearing
a jacket that children born to refugees wear.
 
When I am with them, I cannot say I remember. I say, as I am told
I remember.
 
It is not the accuracy of the story that concerns us.
 
But who gets to tell it.