| Liberation
An old man walks under a startled sky, but only in dream.
When they liberated the camp, he inhaled death
and the decay crept through him, slowly at first, then faster.
It began at his toes, where numbness is hardly ever noticed
and then it moved upward, through the arch of his foot, into the ankle.
It followed the curve of his calf and made the insides
of his knees itch. It was an insidious disease,
like an infestation of moths or watercress sandwiches piled on a plate.
He let his thighs take the brunt of it, the manifestation
of so many skeletal forms reaching out, trying to cry,
trying to do more than blink at open gates
and young men with mercy in their eyes. He let his legs
express their sorrow, their hope, their fear. His muscles knotted up,
formed into tight balls that stretched the skin from inside
and began to push through – the shape of a hand here,
a shaved head there. Every man he hoisted into a grave,
every barely recognizable being he lifted like a sack of ash, grew in his legs.
They burst through and broke off, running or floating away
with only whispers as they went. They took his stride, every footstep
and waltz, every tiptoe past the baby’s room, every chance
to stand up and move through this world again.
So now the old man sits in a wheelchair and remembers
an overcast day, a quiet forest in Germany.
He remembers the smell of bone and muscle burning,
smoke rolling up like tears into the sky. But in his dreams
the sky drinks pain and rains down grace.
In his dreams he is free to walk.
© Ann Walters
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