The Cellar
Topographie des Terrors, Berlin
The sun slides out, then back behind a cloud. I take my sweater off, put it on.
I walk behind you, looking at photographs. Black and white. Behind the photographs, bricks.
Look how thick the wall grew, layer by layer: a barricade.
The bricks are reddish-brown, now topped with soil.
It’s quiet.
What there is to read, you read to me. The eyes in the photographs do not look at us.
(In the basement of the church, there were many coffins lined up. Large ornate ones, small ones, too—children stillborn, or alive a few days only.)
You carry the camera. I could put my fingers on your bare skin, just above or below your elbow.
Shadows move along the wall. Above the bricks, now trees.
Nothing is certain. Not even for the dead.
• • •
Genevieve Leone is readjusting to life in New York City, after having lived and taught for several years in Shanghai, China. Her poems have appeared in Book of Matches, Meridian: the APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing, The Hong Kong Review, Zócalo Public Square, and other journals. Her writing has been supported by the AWP Writer to Writer program.