The Notebook of Uprising

I.

The hand moves across the page of its own accord.

The first years are a yellow field, and a child singing

through her crib bars.

Yours, the windblown canola between the curtain and hope.

Mine, the languor of peony in a time unknown to us.

You wanted only to retrieve a few invisible souvenirs:

words spoken by coals in a tile oven,

empty iron benches wrapped in snow.

Anna said we were all to be sent: Poles, Romanians, Gypsies.

So she drew her finger across her throat.