SURVIVOR
Wild-eyed men smashed through our front door.
We huddled behind our wood-burning stove
trying not to breathe as if stillness were a barricade.
But my mother screamed—and was shot between the eyes.
They hauled the battered body of my father away
over the floor of splintery hand-hewn beams
he had built by himself. I was never to see him again.
I ran as fast as I could over bloodied bodies
into the forest until I collapsed in the snow.
Awakened by partisans who surrounded me
from this nightmare with the gravity of their kindness.