In Black And White

She pressed her hands agaisnt the photographs 

Hoping to push away the memories

Of that never forgotten past

The pain

The sorrow

The nagging rip in her soul that she lived a life time trying to hide

Hide from the pain and the searing memories 

That gave her nightmares

And a fear of growing close to people

A fear of loving

Even the sound of certien voices

An accent 

A language still could shake her to the core

On those days

She would lay in bed just content to have a bed

A place where they couldn't get to her anymore

She was safe here

But her heart was so used to fear

That fear had become her

And over coming it was a daily hope and chore

It was laid out in black in white

Across a coffee table

A hundred faces

All with names and familes

Hopes and dreams and futures

But they were cut short

Just like her familes

Barbed wire fences

Smoke stacks 

And the smell that never left you nose

The taste of food dreams 

When food never came

And when it did

In the form of sawdust bread and rotten meat with broth thrown on top

Bodies

And more bodies

Torture

And hangings

Hoping to make it another day

Wishing to disapear with those that were taken and never returned

But she made it

And the only record left of those she left behind

Are those black and white photographs 

She keeps tucked under her pilliow

After 70 years of remembering

She reaches and sweeps them into her hand and drops them one by one into the trash

It is time she whispers to stop living behind barbed wire fences of my mind

And to stop dwelling on German days and cold nights