The woman with a tiny arm deformed by thalidomide waves to her husband before she enters the security checkpoint. He waves back, not embarrassed by her small, foreshortened gesture. The perspective more dimensionally correct than any pre-Renaissance painting by an anonymous monk in the Dark Ages. But it’s Warsaw she’s flying to, not Florence. Warsaw—where all perspective is skewed by Swedish invasions, battles with Teutonic Knights, the Nazi flood, and the Soviet drought. How else to explain the woman’s arm in the context of history? How else to understand her husband’s faithfulness despite the absent ring on the missing left hand?

Bio: Linda Nemec Foster