Rooms on the Left, Rooms on the Right

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

This poem began when I heard a woman speaking to her children.  I thought my heart would break.  During the Shoah, so many mothers and fathers had to make the unbearable decision whether or not to separate their families.  The decision was life and death.  This poem is dedicated to those forced to endure such choices.

I see spotlights and fences and people standing in lines
to go into rooms on the left and rooms on the right,
and I hear a woman tell her children, “Stay with me,
we don’t want to get separated,” and my heart
begins to pound, and I walk out of the lobby
of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
and look up at the sky in Washington and try to find the sun.

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007).  She is currently producing BE•HOLD, a cinematic poetry performance film. (https://www.facebook.com/BeholdAPerformanceFilm)  Her work has appeared in journals and on line in such publications as Atlanta Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Lilith, Natural Bridge and on beliefnet.com, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Janet is a teaching fellow at CLAL –  The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.