My Name Is Miriam

by Shelly Blankman


A world of dreams imploded by age,
my mirrored face gazes back at me.
Summers of buttercups would soon be over,
the sweet taste of life, too, would wane.
This is the sum of me, I thought.
This is who I am.
But who am I really?

My Hebrew name is Miriam
Its English translation, rebellious.
I am named for my grandmother's sister.

No one calls me Miriam.
She exists no more.
Her story like so many others,
their lives told in anything that survived:
Homes looted in Nazi raids, leaving behind
shards of glass, photos, and papers
shredded and burned.

Nothing left to share, no one left to share them.
Ghosts of children, too.  
A stuffed bear matted with drool.
A crushed game board, 
Stick-figured cats on crumpled paper.

And Miriam, like so many others,
robbed of strength and spirit,
no way to stand, nowhere to go,
mired in the mud where life used to be,
where men toiled
and women cooked
  and children giggled
and teachers taught 
  and rabbis chanted. 

Burning embers are all that remain
where skeletal villages are living graves
spit on by brown-shirted boys, barely men,
air thick with the stench of the dying, the dead. 
A fortunate few able to flee, jammed 
in a barge destined for dreams in America.

Among the chattel, my grandmother,
Miriam’s sister, her dress so lovingly stitched,
now stained and grimy, sagging on her four-foot frame,
so tiny against this monster war that had choked her childhood,
and in its wake, sweet Miriam.

In this barge prison, my grandmother, 
masking pain and loss like so many others
on the boat that day, headed in fear for freedom
hanging onto a frayed rope of hope through fickle waters,
hearts pounding with each ocean wave.
Like others, she cries and no one hears

My own grandmother, carrying only her small carpet pouch
filled only with a few photos, maybe a coin or two 
from her beloved Austria.

Dreams of freedom mixed with fear.
No family or friends waiting to welcome her.
No one to say, “Cry on if you want, cry if you must.”
Invisible tears. No one must know her pain.

My grandmother, so small and frail at seventeen.
Her high-top shoes, scuffed with mud.
What would her mother say?
She shudders at the thought.
Her mother is gone. Her father, too.
Nine brothers and sisters left behind
in distant snaking smoke.

And her dear, sweet Miriam–her sister and confidante.
Her anchor to life, itself. Like the rest of them, a hellish life
cut short in a gas chamber, cement walls etched
in fingerprints by desperate Jews struggling to escape
only to be dumped in a mass grave.

Now, generations later, the smoke long cleared,
I carry her name. Miriam. Hebrew for rebellious.
Yet, how could Miriam rebel? How would she? 
How could she? No voice. No power. 

I am bound to rebel where she could not.
I am bound to remember her, all others who died with her,
and all those who would have been born for generations to follow
if only she had lived. 

I am bound to speak for those muted by fear
to show strength for those who cannot.

I am bound to rebel.
My name is Miriam.


* * * * *

“My Name Is Miriam” was first published by Poetry Superhighway.

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, where she and her husband have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a foster dog. Their sons, Richard and Joshua, live in New York and Texas, respectively. Following careers in journalism, public relations, and copy editing, Shelly now spends time writing poetry, scrapbooking and making cards. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Muddy River Review, among other publications. Richard and Joshua surprised her by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.