I think often
Of breastfeeding
The tip of my ****** tickling his skin-thin upper gum.
In my imagination
It is many minutes of calm
I cup his head
Which fits into a palm and a half
My body is full
With his quiet innocence.

I imagine trying to imagine
How much he doesn’t know
All the ***** things
This action may mean one day
How he doesn’t know
What a kitchen is
Or a mortgage or an income
His fears are not boring.
Mine are of finances and guilt
His involve teethed creatures and deaf silences.
He does not know what it means
For the time to be 3:15
Nor can he comprehend
The recentness of his existence.

I and the cat are nocturnal
He lives in intervals.
We associate babies
With a soft pink
I imagine
Looking into his eyes
Two wrinkly slits
Wondering how to
Confirm this.

My family came from Pfolzheim too
I have grown up
with so much shame
for being German
at all
This is what I have struggled with
since Trump got elected
For me I saw quickly through
the thin smoke
what he was all about
That a vote for him was akin to me
of wearing a **** uniform
daily
proudly
publicly
It's not that I hate anyone
It's that in the raw recentness of
MY family history
was instilled in me to know
to FEAR
those attitudes
as though my life depended on it
As it so easily might
Again
So soon
So ******* soon
I fear we have learned nothing