The worst thing is
not knowing.
Where is my father?
My mother? My sister?
Where is my best friend Henry?
When I was small
and I would cry,
my mother,
no matter where she was,
would find me and scoop me into her arms.
She always made me feel safe
and loved.
It was the best part of being a child.
Saul and I are led back to the Kielce Ghetto
in the company of other boys and young men.
We move down streets where nothing is familiar
except their names: Stolarska, Jasna.
There is a stench that causes some to gag.
Others bring up bile.
We must move bodies. But they are stiff and gnarled
like tree branches.
I am not afraid.
The people who lived in these bodies are gone.
We have a job to do—
repair the roads, load coal, clean out the
rooms in the ghetto,
and bury the dead.
With each body we toss into makeshift graves
some of our youth is tossed in, too.
We now know things that only men
could know.
Only men should know.
We are young.
We can see the saltwater
paths that our tears have left on our faces.
We are young,
but we are not children.
There are no children here.