Ev's Story III: The Fates

St. Paul, Minnesota 1943-1945

Hands across my sister's pregnant swell,
We guess. Is this a head? No, no.

It's soft. It must be the other end! 
The babies keep Tony home 

from war. My dreamed belly splits wide--
Roy comes out in army green and sweat, 

crouched beside a mine. He sweeps 
the earth and leaves away

the way my sister strokes 
her baby's hair. Safe now,

a column of soldiers passes by. 
They liberate Buchenwald. 

The general is unequivocal: no one 
can forget, though many may try. Home,

Roy brings a book of skulls, 
glimpses of black-striped cloth. 

I see limp fingers, bruised feet, 
faces, faces, faces. They are 

unbearably heavy. Roy 
tells of skeletal men who, with their hands, hid

their nakedness from the camera's
unforgiving eye, the way their shy

smiles remembered a decorous
time of starched tablecloths and suits, 

pressed. Roy is different now: 
his early gray, the lines around his mouth. 

The way he hates loud noises. 
The way he will not dance. 


Roy never speaks of our small loss. 
From the shelf, the war album accuses:

how can you complain? I dust the china
cabinet glass, careful not to make a sound.