My grandfather cries daily for Anne Frank,
lamenting over her lost innocence
and all her diaries that will never be found,
buried under mounds of rubble
or shards of glass in Bergen-Belsen,
where she eventually succumbed
to typhus. He has her full name tattooed on the inside of his wrist
so it is the first thing he sees when he holds his head
in his hands. Annelies “Anne” Marie Frank.
I can only love in the dark, otherwise my skin trembles
too violently for me to be touched.
We make love on the nights when the lightning
crackles so loudly outside the windows it sounds as if
the whole universe is splitting from seam to seam.
We are two halves of the moon; our darkness
shines ripe from within.
I am an apartment building filled with burning floors
that no fireman wants to rescue all the scared children from.
No one will ever want to hold me
if I cannot hold myself.
And while I do not envy Anne Frank in the slightest,
that beautiful soul, I do envy how fiercely
my grandfather loves her, as if she were still alive now,
in this very kitchen, clutching her diary in her hands,
the light not yet gone out of her eyes.