Grandma Anna At Day’s End by Arlene Metrick

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