Unspeakable

I.
Why didn’t you
tell us about the Holocaust,
instead of walking around its edges?
Were you too afraid
we’d lose our footing?
Was it too unspeakable a horror
to say out loud,
as if giving it words
would allow it space to occupy?
And once insinuated,
how to rid it from our family
and return to everyday life,
a temporary and fragile life
pasted together in its aftermath.
How do you tell children,
born into safety and security and sheltered innocence,
that out in the world
we are so hated,
there are those
who try to blot us out?
And living in a land
you hope will be different,
keeping the dark truth of it away,
hoping against hope,
it wouldn’t happen here:
that old hatreds
hadn’t planted their seeds
in this newfound earth,
or that you wouldn’t have to see
friends and neighbours turn on you.
Difficult
to wrap your own head around,
much less,
tell to ten-year-old ears.

II.
There was no need
to point out pictures in a book and say,
this happened,
no need
to tell stories that said,
it was real,
and no need
to learn lessons from history.
Because,
I had already absorbed it.
Etched into the rites and rituals and holidays of our religion,
painted on the words and phrases of our language,
and drawn deep on my DNA
was the knowledge
that every moment of joy,
was tempered with the possibility
it could be taken.
I knew to expect
that weddings would always have broken glass,
new borns would always experience pain,
and the world
wouldn’t roll out a welcome mat.
Better to steel yourself
against the inevitable.
Better to harden your heart
to hateful comments.

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