dishes
orange green purple
italian country dishes
with roosters
and rabbits
and carrots and dots
cheerful
hand-painted
hard to break
seeing them i feel uplifted and
joyful and home
white porcelain with
royal blue and gold
rims
my grandmother’s
dishes
fragile like her
a woman i never met
she whom my mother mourned
for as long as i knew her
elegant and simple
like my grandmother
these heirloom dishes
will stay in my keeping
until i too die
like my grandmother
her life cut short
in auschwitz
concentration camp
concentration camp dishes
white blue gold
fragile but heavy
with memories and
guilt
my mother’s
guilt for leaving
her mother behind
at the train station in vienna
when she left
with my father
who saved her life
long ago
eighty years ago
and the dishes
always remind me
of what we
all lost
what i
lost
and find again when
i place the
white blue gold
dishes on my
table
used again
by living breathing
people
my grandmother
smiling gently sweetly
my mother grateful
i always grandmotherless
and now motherless
travel through time
and reclaim my legacy
Linda Schreyer 