Rolf Yngve in The Common

Fiction 2012 alum Rolf Yngve‘s new piece “Their Names” is up at The Common, as part of their “Dispatches” feature:

Their Names

I told Christopher, the wall passed through here. We stood on the sidewalk and looked down at a plaque set into chic, new cobblestones.

Berliner Mauer 1961–1989.

We had walked down from the Brandenburg gate in the late fall with the linden trees bare, the citizens well-cloaked. A granular snow pricked our cheeks and sifted over the streets. Christopher had been two years old when the East German border guards shrugged their shoulders and opened the gates. Now he was eighteen and bored.

I told him, this is where the open field ran along the wall to give them a clear area to shoot people. He asked me, where were you? I was here in Germany. I studied at their war college, I told him. I saw this. I remember...[Keep Reading]…