Naoko Fujimoto
Ten minutes ago, no mile markers dug into my chest.
I am afraid.
Until today, I did not know about Babi Yar.
I seem to be
a Japanese girl
whose Grandfather smelled the mushroom cloud
over the black hill of Hiroshima,
and whose Grandmother hid in a ditch with three horses while
counting the B-29s flying overhead shooting bullets.
I seem to
understand
the war was there seventy-six years ago.
Here I have photo documentaries of Auschwitz.
Here I scream, "No War!"
and am relieved
I have never had to hide my dining lamp with cloth.
I laugh
with my Caucasian husband and Caribbean friend
over garden vegetable spaghetti and thin cinnamon cookies.
Our life seems to be
happy.
We can walk in this neighborhood, holding our hands,
greeting fellow walkers and their variety of dogs—
Anne Frank seems to
smile, "Finally."
Here young children run by.
Here they scream, "Catch me if you can!"
and I want to ignore why I was afraid of the mass murder;
piled bodies alter a ravine into a flat path,
where we march on unassuming mud and stones. It becomes a wide, ridged road.
We seem to
walk here again
voluntarily, not knowing what exactly this street is made of.