Tom, Debra and I are sitting down to the
meal she’s cooked when, she, a Lutheran
minister, remembers Mr. Breuer next door
in 2A. He lost his wife two weeks ago
to cancer; it seems the neighborly thing
to ask him in to share the meal. Grief
has tenderized his face. He doesn’t talk,
pushes a fork through the sweet potato squash.
The bruise on his arm resolves, on second glance,
into numbers. Yes, he says, he’d been interned.
Buchenwald. He’d survived. But what, he asks,
is this “survive”? Is survive that your body
is here, gets up, goes to window, goes to toilet,
makes tea, makes toast? “Shovel this latrine,
Jew,” the German soldier says. “So give
me shovel,” I says. “There is no shovel,
Jew,” he says. “Use your hands.” And so, is
true, Femmie and me survive, he says, crying.
