Walking through Anne Frank House

Perhaps it’s the wait to climb the narrow staircase to the secret annexe,

to look at the pencil marks on a wall; marks protected behind a glass case,

showing the heights of Anne and her siblings.

Maybe it’s the ban on photographs or the way the rooms

have been stripped bare that makes them savour each object.

The way the woman from Brooklyn touches each surface

as though it’s a talisman, stroking the speckled granite sink;

staring down at the simple toilet basin

etched with fine blue birds, the rusted cistern.

The barest details, like the postcards on the wall of Anne’s room.

Faded cards of a basket of strawberries, of a man smoking a cigar,

of four chimps at a table. Leonardo Da Vinci and Ginger Rogers.

Rembrandt. The Dutch royal family. Maybe it’s all these things

that lead her to wait impatiently for her husband to read an inscription,

before asking what she should wear on the flight home.

‘Layers,’ he says. ‘That’s what I’ll be wearing. You should wear layers too.’