Maree Makom

A Memory
And years later, grief already heaped up dry and frail, peeled membrane over membrane; and
the garden stretching under the white sky, on both sides of the house in Tshernichovsky Street,
erupting thorny bushes and wild grass under the array of metal poles rocking in scarred cement
pits. Wind-whipped age-white feathers are trapped between wilted stems, hollow seed bells,
mute, and in the back corner, the bodies of the oil-sweaty sand bags are still lying next to the
ladder leading to the shelter.