(France 1943/2013)
1
I witnessed nothing
to speak of because
we were Free.
My life at four was the same
as at three. Then whispers wound
into my ears, or,
Father never whispered –
he gave me fire to breathe –
all the oxygen lit the room,
burning me up until my breath
writhed in the body’s drum.
Nothing changed but my mind.
2
I have a sense of him having said –
to Mother? a Soldier? –
something, but recall
none of the words,
only a sentence ending,
susurrous, in a hiss,
and I froze. Put together
the words were menacing, sneak-
attacks, after which fear
riddled me day and night
like bullets. I have never not lived
with the fact of having heard,
3
the tear in me trauma
rent when I secreted
zero at the bone.
Father was high up – I never got
his echelon straight before the war
was over – but he was someone
who knew things
done to whom by whom
and when I snuck to the door
to listen, the sound words
made was lightning flashed
right into my skull.