growing up

I think of the war children
all of them walking through the weedy future fields.

The young man riding on the university’s back with an already worn out saddle
he holds on to because his mother and father are gone,
gone with the dust of the shoah.

The small dark haired girl snatched from her parents who were never there.
All she knows is loneliness down Helvetica’s roads as she clings to her braids and cradles them likes dolls.

These youths I carry upon me, relics of my own being...
For me they gave bourgeois comfort, the past smoothed out in barbies and down comforters, morning orange juice and shiny new shoes.

They wondered why I suffered in my innocence.

And as I tuck my little ones to bed at night,
I think of the war children and gently pull the covers under their chins
and kiss them goodnight.