Animals hide, and grow wild. Everyone packs redness in their eyes and dreams the night is calm without howling. My German mother remembers body parts hanging from trees and faces agape with incomplete smiles. She tells me of identification by nail polish. She remembers a jar filled with child bones, and a shoe, above an empty slab haunted by bodies.
Death is shown in pieces.
Shouts of murdered people lift white smoke into the sky and leave dust on her window. Human ash is grass-covered now. Dogs die screaming. Broken dolls fall into mud and face war. Dolls and victims are at someone's mercy.