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.
