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Skin to skin. 

I know he loves my insides, 

So I pour them all out,

All over the bed,

Until the sheets are stained. 

Then I shower 

I am the product of my maker 

my mothers rain and swollen stomach 

her supposed worth; the give and give and give to her take 

Those who are lost 

have forgotten 

the body does not stop or start at the skin,

but continues to be one being. 

It is the summer before my freshman year of high school. I greet the world as one would a new friend. Possibility stretches from all directions, reaching out from my pale skin and dissipating into the cloudless sky.

Delicate and soft, the most beautiful poppy flower stands before me. Gently swaying in the breeze, her tender face gleaming up toward the sun. 

My grandmother, Savta to me, was born a week after Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” named so due to the amount of glass from broken windows that littered the street following an antisemitic attack in 1938.