Hannah the Poet

For a Social Studies/Language Arts project, Hannah had to write a poem relating to the Holocaust. This is what she turned in:

Death’s Kiss

On a crowded train to my doom

I cry, scream, plead

Into an ear

That cannot hear

The future looms, in the smoke over there

Where the bodies burn.

Soon I will be ash, floating in the sky…

I have always wanted to fly.

Out of the train,

Death holds my hand

I have nothing left

And nothing to lose.

Angry yells and barbed wire

Welcome, please, jump in the fire.

This way, go that way

Like a shy child, I obey

Now I take the cleansing of my life

In the shower Death kisses me

Her lips are cold, her grasp is steel

She is beautiful

She is my one way out of this dark hole.

I was pretty amazed. It is so strange because Hannah is so like me in so many ways, but so different too. My high school English teacher told me I was the most literal person she had ever met. What a surprise when I majored in math! For Hannah to write that poem is so out of my league, it isn't funny. And of course - she hates math.