Me and the Concentration Camp Women
When those women who used to be dancers,
those women who were mothers
or maybe they ran businesses,
or managed gardens, households,
maybe they played piano, or sang
or taught the daughters—when those women
saw themselves in the camps
did they see what I saw last night,
my small and hollow eyes in a bare head,
a body I donʻt know, bleeding gums,
scars, new scars everywhere?
Did they see that hand that weighs
that hangs and makes the shapes of
maybe that was all of it and now
you crumble, you melt
you become nothing that you know,
a creature in a half lit room
hollow and strange,
not even an echo, as gone
as lovers and mothers in Germany
before I was born, before I knew
how close that breath was,
the breath you thought you had.
