The Core of Conditionality

Blood spills like oil

Pooling it glimmers like rainbow.

Its metallic stench making a home in my nostrils, my poors, my temples,

My aching crowns and backs.

I’m pollen: casualties in growth itching the throat.

But your bullets pierce flowers like us til we float

away in memory, name, words...

I will never forget. As for you

I’m not so sure yet.

Your silence is deafening.

That’s why I’m not fucking surprised.

I remember gunmen threats at Jewish day school. Relentless anti-Semitic graffiti. The constant Holocaust jokes. The Holocaust denier, comparer, relayer. Generous uses of Nazi and Hitler as adjectives. But the names of those lost remain without narrative.

I’m fucking heartbroken. That’s all there is.