SHADE



The scents and sounds of camp life
Surround her, burrowing deep into
The disrupted, chilled night air
Like weeds between the cracks;
They itch but are not soothed
And crawl beneath, sheathed
In subterfuge.
She hears the fire spark and
Sees the brightcold spots of flame
Jump to the washed-out sky overhead
Only to fade far from it,
Brought down by the weight
Of grief, of hunger,
Of tower searchlights, which gleam
On chain-link fences.
The taste of stale water
Lingers on her lips like gasoline
And she knows that the taste,
Like the fire and the stars,
Is not hers to know,
Clung to by the
Seas and seeds of disease
Which she has never faced.
Men's voices rise and fall
Like sparkfire to the stars
And she can hear the bass and tenor
Weave of long singsong journeys;
The journeys are etched indelibly
Into the soles of her untested feet
By gravel, by glass, and by
Other things that
She has not yet known.
They speak of days
Long-forgotten, days that she
Remembers through restless dreams
And sudden flashes of silence in
Classrooms and hallways and showers.
She runs like a fugitive
Across the slant of the landscape
And her feet hit the curved ground
That they saw
But did not touch;
She tresspasses lightly,
Barely touching the burnt brown grass,
Barely seeing the long shower lineups,
Barely remembering the last of her
History classes, and maybe
That's for the best.
And her fingers take the texture of
Smoke and poison in the air,
To store in her encyclopaedia of
Unwilling isolation
In which she compares the
Rough first-kiss lips to
Chapped skin in the
Bitter winter.
New concrete and ceramic tile
Press coldly into her aching ribs,
And she tastes hatred for the first time:
It is the taste of stale water
And week-old bread
And smoke in the night's sharp air;
It is a needle against her elbow,
A cut-off scream from the other side
Of the fence,
It is the three-part choir
Of grown-up men in her mind
That she cannot escape, even
In dreams.
Auschwitz occupies her.
The barbed-wire fences bend
If she thinks too long and too hard;
But to bend the barbed-wire fences
Is not to escape;
The bruises running down her
Little-boy's jaw are
Ample proof of that.
This is no hero's journey.
Her crimes climb her arms
Crossing the skin, invisible scars that
Creep under the leather,
Veins that stand out,
Trophies of her conquests.
Treason tracks her
Wherever she goes, enclosing
Her fingers one by one:
She is a stranger in a
Strange man's head, or he in hers;
The difference is too thin to tell,
And it stretches across her crowded mind,
Like leather, or
A Nazi lampshade, casting
Light on a smoky room that she
watches from outside, rain soaking
Her short dark hair.
There is a price for her crimes;
A very high price indeed
For a flash of white skin
From beneath the whisper of
Smooth satin, or even for
A show of hands in the morning
To guard what is not hers
From escape.
Yes, a price.
A gold filling dropped into an
Outstretched hand's callouses,
A shovel thrust into dry earth,
Frustrated with salted soil,
Or even, if she's seen it right,
That very fine piece of
Jewish linen --
It eludes her.
She pays.
For every breath that they
Do not take, suffocated
By their faceless newfound poverty,
She pays.
For every day she does not own that
Rises unbidden when she closes her eyes,
For all those years lived
And lost before her birth,
She pays.
But especially for every childhood fancy
That she dreams she
Might once have
Dreamed, long ago --
She pays, she pays, she pays.



FIN



NOTES
1. Nazi lampshades -- were made out of the skin of Jewish concentration camp victims.
2. Jewish linen -- the death shroud.
3. This was highly experimental; I wanted to write Rogue and her voices, but figuring out how without being boring was a challenge. I'm kind of fond of this piece, but I would adore some feedback on this.
4. This piece is available in pretty HTML on my website, along with my other work -- http://imprimeur.pyrefly.ca -- so if you'd prefer to check stuff out there, go for it.

Thanks!

-elle