Last Minutes in Afghanistan

A quadrille is a poem consisting of exactly 44 words. Please bear with me over the long introduction

Her fist came through the crowd.
"Take it, please!" she screamed, her voice briefly clear, isolated from the shouting, pleading, and the roar of the turboprops of our large Hercules military transport plane; a sudden wind lashing at her headscarf.
I looked down at her opening hand, folded note between long fingers, long clean fingers despite a face marked with shadows.
"Please!" — green eyes shining, imploring: "I want the world to know I existed!" she cried out hoarsely, her hand in mine, before she was swept away in the crowd.

Three months later. I still have not been able to open the piece of paper.

today under gentle snowfall

a picture in my mind

lingers

of her blowing her stark, cold bare fingers

somewhere in the streets of Kabul

her note lies still unopened on the table

I will come back, I whisper, under my false crown

I will

for dversepoets