Neighbor

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.