I’ve forgotten what I used to look like.
Challah, boiled potatoes, birthing
nine children rounding my flesh.
I step around horse dung on the morning
walk to my restaurant, my own sour
breath stinging my nose.
Crowds gather like crows in the street.
They don’t move when creaky cars
chug their way over rutted roads.
Sirens pierce my skin, remind me
of the two toddlers we lost at sea. My
little starved ones. I couldn’t feed them.
I stood on the deck, clutched at the rail.
Inhaled what was hidden under chill
ocean winds. They were gone.
I do not wish for our Budapest lives, the ones
we fled. The fried eggs mixed with fear, bottled
borscht like blood dripped on the run.
Now I’m slender again. At day’s end, I collapse
on our sofa. My hand strokes the wooden
rocking horse, smoothed by years of use.
From Publishing and The Writer's Life with Anique Sara Taylor