Shadow Play

He played in his father’s shadow with a wooden Kalashnikov. Meanwhile the goats needed milking. The sun daily entered the sky tower calling air to prayer. His father has been gone too long his mother cries wails beats her chest. He follows the ways of his older brothers. “Put this finger here,” one says, “this is how you milk a she-goat.” Another says, “Put your finger there, that is how you pull a trigger.” Soon he will put on the robes of a shining martyr, shave the hairs off his hairless body then far from the village wash every inch of his 12 year old life away to become the very shadow of his father.