How To Spot One of Us
We’re the ones who didn’t know our relatives
spoke with accents, the ones whose parents
got nervous if we didn’t come home
on time, were afraid to let us go
places by ourselves, who
told the neighborhood kids the numbers
on their forearms were their phone numbers,
who won’t visit Germany, who wake up
night after night from dreams, who never talk
about the past, or never stop
talking about the past, and we’re the ones
who dream about big families, who
wish words could just be words, wish “camp”
or “selection” didn’t make us flinch,
and sometimes we’re the ones
who do everything we can
so you don’t know who we are.