Anne Frank's Mouse

Carry my final breath,
she cooed to her mouse
in Bergen-Belson
awake in the barracks
before roll call. He scratched
his prickling feet
through her sleeve’s heavy hoop
too big for her arms
melting like candles
in the starving dawn.
She hid him all day
hoping the S.S.
never saw her pet
named Peter, she’d fed
speckles of bread at night
from the one slice slapped
for inmates’ suppers.

Run off when I die
she coughed quietly;
wed a she-mouse wreathed
with dandelions
and rattling brambles.
Let sparrows strike stars 
with flaked moon-drowned wings
and forest ferns swirl
from the Ardennes’ bones,
oaken roots blasting
concrete into dust.
Father your blind young
with a great whale’s freedom.

All birds, beasts and men
will blossom again
she whispered to Peter
in a typhoid daze.
Bean pods finger
the sun’s honey.
Infants like pink clouds
fatten with milky rain.
Earth rolls her green wheel.
The world cannot lose.