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sixteen-years-old, hiding in the achterhuis
- the secret annexe - with strangers.
even my parents were shrill strangers.
my mother vain with an animal pelt
about her throat, a chamber pot in her
hatbox. her fingers taking the dying pulse of
the life she had left behind.

it was all upstairs and downstairs, really.

anne told me of the film star posters
glued along one wall, glamorous faces
ever-watching, even as i watched out the window.
wanting to hear the hush of the canal in
the narrow space between building and water.
i was never able to glimpse water until they
came with guns, feet flat against the brick floor.

it was all plain furniture, no figure work at all, really.

i had given anne a chocolate bar when she turned
thirteen, her hair curling about her face poetically -
not that i was a poet. i did not imagine what it
would be like to taste melted chocolate on her
tongue. patience. my mother was the coquette
in the family. what would the male version be?
a shameless flirt with an empty belly.

like father like son, really.

except not. my father blustered and raged,
putting forth his opinion like a moldering sock beneath
the nose of his opponent. the lumbago i had
made me - not him - the laughingstock, blue tongue
apt to swipe clean lines down anne's arms. marveling
at how skin becomes dry without all that fussy woman's
magic that transforms clear eyes into hooded monsters.

i never liked margot much, really.

i can't say i loved anne. i gifted and stole
her first kiss from her plain mouth. our mouths joined
in quiet communion, each wishing for another.
when her eyes looked they saw another time,
another boy. brought together by a house smelling
of too many in too little space. our hands
meeting in a dark room, two drowning sailors.

clasping hands before the ship went down. really.

my father was gassed yesterday, no chance for
comfort when choking clouds came down like locusts.
the staccato lights giving rise to the screams of
slaughtered pigs. he marched away from me,
his legs going up and down like an automon,
the lines of his face and sagging mouth speaking
in their terrible silence. his clothes came back in a cart.

it will be my turn to march, legs hurtling me into the future.

a figure eight lies on its side and i think of anne.