Protestors on the College Green

Protestors on the College Green

by Lena Renee Anzarut

they read history books, ink

still bleeding

and like to pretend

that they would have been righteous,

that they would not have turned away,

would not have lit a torch, 

would not have carried a pitchfork,

like they aren’t still carrying pitchforks, even now

like their words don’t echo,

don’t have teeth,

don’t hide knives.

they march through streets paved 

with headstones, 

and live in houses built from ash, 

and like to pretend

that they don’t tread on our bones, 

that their neighborhood isn’t a graveyard, 

that their hands are clean,

that they don’t live with ghosts, 

that they don’t sound like killers.

I hide my Magen David

under my shirt when I pass,

and think of blood staining the streets of Seville, 

of hushed prayer and closed curtains and unlit candles, 

of mezuzahs concealed under the feet of Virgin Marys

and trials and confessions

and flames licking, 

I think of smoke clogging the streets of Aleppo, 

of ghosts in Minsk and Bialystok and Warsaw,

of smashed shop windows and broken glass

and bullets and rubble,

and synagogues burning.

I hide my Magen David

when I pass

and think of the unending cost of exile,

drowning in the pages

of this history book, words 

bleeding together,

chapters scrawled into skin,

ink etched into bone, 

and I can’t pretend

that I’m not haunted by Seville and Aleppo 

and Minsk and Bialystok and Warsaw.

I can’t pretend that I haven’t read this book before.

I can’t pretend that I don’t know how it ends.

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