She stopped speaking to him.
Without her to buoy their fractured relationship, there was no contact.
Nothing.
Who knew when it first started?
With the Nazi’s maybe, but no one ever talked about it.
Love withheld.
A gas that poisons generations —mother to son, son to daughter.
Blood of my blood. Bone of my bone.
And we arrived here, with our ghouls in suitcases waiting to be unpacked in this new place.
Neglect and negligence, the wooden spoon to be punished with.
Daughter becomes mother. Father becomes child.
He took two hundred dollars through a lie,
but it was never about the money. Not really.
It was their connection — broken, borrowed, stolen.
It was the continuation of the curse that all their families carried.
They were ‘estranged’, that was how she said it to herself in the mirror.
There were worst things.
It didn’t stop her seeing him everywhere.
Riding his bike past her house. Even though he had forgotten where she lived.
—-
Carmen Angerer 