CHAJA-LEA RETURNS
Volodymyrets, Ukraine 1945
This is where we were.
For centuries. Imagine
the deafening fall of each footstep
at the town’s edge blurred
after you hold your breath
through a winter that lasts
five years. If you sigh
they’ll find you.
Doors like tombstones
line the street, conceal
the whereabouts of former
neighbors. Nothing different
but not recognizable either
in this silence. Like the old baker
whose eyes drift
to a new clearing in the woods.
