Photo Albums

the pictures went in like a splinter you cannot dig out.

one was a Jewish boy, maybe ten, lost inside a heap of striped rags. the yellow star sewn onto the chest like a shipping label on a crate. then page after page of bones twisted wrong, black smoke rolling out of brick chimneys into a flat, empty sky

the refrigerator hums behind the drywall. the tip of his cigarette glows orange in the corner. he sits in the half-dark living room trying to force the images out of his head with anything else. like iron hooves slamming red dirt, the thick green stink of the South African bush at night. anything to overwrite those albums his grandfather dragged home after the war, pages stiff with other people’s endings.

the photos stayed, quiet and patient, teaching a cold humility.

the world can turn a whole town into smoke while everyone else finishes a beer.

war correspondent,
battle of El Alamein,
on to Treblinka.