Beneath the city we speak many languages,
none fluently:
in our solitude we cannot hear
how foreign words were meant to sound.
Liesl calls my window a "mercy."
To me it is a threat
or a tease,
a glimpse of the impossible
like ******.

Yes I have tiny hands,
tiny thoughts, hopes, dreams
beneath the city that is closed to me:
useless treasure,
an unreadable book in a foreign tongue
full of printers errors
and, like this poem,
a wrestling match with words.

We tried to speak,
we sat and watched each other,
shared mornings and nights.
But still we came here,
up these crooked stairs
alone and so small, behind warped glass
an oddity, a curiosity in a freak show.
And what is curiosity
but another way to cut myself
without leaving scars?