Betrayals

M. Benjamin Thorne

Content warning: antisemitism, concentration camps, genocide, health, the Holocaust, trauma, violence, war

It sits there, ebony orca with mouth agape,
teeth gleaming white, waiting to be fed
schools of sound, swimming so fragilely.
My fingers knew its maw 
intimately, until a vessel sprung a leak
and left me half-lame, paralyzed.

I ask the nurse to bring me to the piano,
but only the word “bicycle” escapes
my lips, slipping past, a fugitive.

Where have they gone, old friends
who used to riot in my mind?
How can they leave me?
I attempt to speak but only imposters
leave my mouth, only shameless traitors.

Riding my bike through the Polish forest
the air flowed through my hair
like notes from a Chopin waltz.
I pedaled the way my fingers rode the keys,
furiously in love with freedom’s motion.
Heading from recital to Agnieszka’s home
as every Friday, approaching the village I saw
Germans savaging everything, red
smeared on the sides of homes.
I fled, riding back through forest
to a farmer’s barn, leaving my bike outside,
just painted weeks earlier with a magen david.

Was it the bike frame that gave me away,
or the farmer?. . .In the camps, I forgot much,
but learned many new lessons, many new songs,
the numbers burned in my flesh
a notation for hell’s symphony.

It took long years before I could play another tune.
Always the piano loomed like some large beast
waiting to consume me.

The stroke was a second forgetting.

If only I could explain to the nurse that now
music is the only way to reach her
in my heart without causing too much pain,
the only vehicle capable of carrying me
back to Agnieszka and her cold brown eyes.

The Science

This poem is inspired by research into the comorbidity of stroke victims suffering from aphasia who are also living with pre-existing significant trauma/PTSD. “Comorbidity” refers to the presence of two or more medical conditions in a patient; “aphasia” is the term used to describe a person’s inability—partially or wholly—to understand and express language. Aphasia can manifest in different ways, including unconsciously substituting one word for another; aphasia is common among victims of stroke. For more on the subject of Holocaust survivors with PTSD and how aphasia further complicates their lives, see 'Symptoms of PTSD in 124 survivors of the Holocaust'.

The Poet

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Autumn Sky Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Sky Island Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Poets for Science. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.

Next poem: Digitial othering by Hannu Larsson