After seventy years

it is the leaving

she holds in her hands.

Shivering in the heat

a blonde girl wrapped in black wool

moves towards the gate.

Outside a man waits.

She is to exit on the left

remove the star, walk out.

Behind, from a broken window

the mother and father will her

beyond the gate, pray she does not look

back. She is to walk alone. They stay

she will go, they have decided

she says no but they will not barter

with their child’s life. She glues

their photos in the soles of her shoes –

father and mother

each step grinding to a future,

to a mother’s voice: You will go.

You will see. You will survive.

-

The sky falls down: An Anthology of Loss (eds Terry Whitebeach and Gina Mercer), 2019, p 286