Mice in a Matchbox

Awarded Honorable Mention from Academy of American Poets Association

Awarded High Distinction in Emerson College's Senior Writing Awards

They don’t save the children with your face, my mother says,

Braiding rivers into my hair.

There are too many rows of crayon drawings to burn,

Too many buildings to crumble and devour like pryaniki,

Too much twisting smoke to breathe in with the smell

Of Babushka’s blini on the stove.

Last night, I saw a little girl lying on my own kitchen floor.

Maybe it was my sister with her rosy apple-cheeks,

Maybe she wasn’t dead at all,

But I know the children were left under my playground,

The ones with our face.

The ones that lived in my childhood,

Now curled around each other like mice.

So terribly quiet,

Like mice.