A Small Lie
Most of my family left,
some to England,
others farther, to America,
before the Germans came.
I couldn’t, with my husband
needing my care, the neighbors
eventually needing my nursing.
Somehow, I survived the horrors.
All these years out of touch,
I need to send letters, a photo.
They’ll have heard the news,
but don’t need the truth from me.
(after an unattributed late-1946 photograph of a portrait photographer in Warsaw, Poland, colorized by Marina Maral and found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/132844921@N08/37365621530)
6 thoughts on "A Small Lie"
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Wow !
Each one I say is my favorite is eclipsed by the next.
This one is my favorite so far.
As always, thanks, Coleman. Guess we’ll have to see what the next 3 days hold.
It’s like your subjects have a new life! Amazing how well you render these voices.
Thanks, Linda. They’re voices I’ve heard, if only in passing sometimes. Survivors of the war in Europe, in this case. And family. While Sweden was neutral, the Germans flew over to get to Norway, and until her death my mother would panic at the sound of a siren. My father had relatives in Norway; when I met them in 1958, anything to do with Germany was an abomination.
This title with the last line! I’m intrigued from start to finish.
I feel her longing especially in “All these years out of touch” and wonder what joys a woman like her could have had. . . . What a heartfelt poem.
Thank you, Michele. Those were turbulent, traumatic times. In 1932, due to the Depression, my father’s family left Brooklyn to live with relatives in Norway. In 1939, they went to Sweden before the Germans could come. In 1947, they (and my Swedish mother) began to come to/back to the States. And they were the lucky ones. So many “what if” and “if only” conversations across the dinner tables. It wasn’t until 1958 that those of us here had the chance to see those who lived there.