Jessica Goody
263 PRINSENGRACHT
In Memory of Anne Frank
A bookcase blocks the doors, shelves
of fat tomes with age-rotten bindings.
An old trunk bearing the scabs of peeling stickers
sits on the wooden floor, its planks gray with grime.
Old cardigans, the moth-eaten open weave of crochet is
not nearly warm enough for comfort in an unheated building.
The scratching of your dwindling pencil
might be mistaken for the scrabbling of rats overhead.
Shadows flicker on the dark beams and rafters
from a single window, six panes which divide
every reflection into quadrants: sunset, starlight,
moonglow, and the play of light from dancing clouds.
You no longer bear witness to daylight.
what stories did you tell to soothe yourself, sustaining
your narrow existence with only your imagination
to remind yourself of life beyond this nocturnal existence
where your ears strain for the sounds of jackboots and air raid sirens,
blinking away the horrors flashing in your mind's dark eye?
Jessica Goody was born and raised on Long Island. She currently lives in South Carolina, where
she writes for SunSations Magazine. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including
Reader's Digest, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Maine Review She was
awarded second place in the 2015 Reader's Digest Poetry Competition. Her forthcoming poetry collection
Defense Mechanisms will be available from Phosphene Publishing in 2017. She has cerebral palsy.
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