you don’t say

It’s always like this, I share a new piece of history I’ve learned,
another one that rattles how you were taught to frame up
your reality and somewhere down the path of tears and
reshuffling you say “I’ve told you the story about… (blank)…
right?’

the answer is always no, but this seems to be the only way
to shake loose the rote recounting you were trained in 

I know in so many families the elders refuse to let light crack
their stores of terror and grief no matter how many hungry
innocent curiosities prickle the skins of their stubbornness 

in my family retelling was a compulsion, each crossing only
possible if we paid the goblin under the bridge in promises
to not feel anything new, like an open cage we nest in the
wrought familiar of limitation, denial glinting through the
bars each time you’re genuinely surprised that there’s still
a precise calculation of stories I’ve heard and a ripening
wilderness of the ones I haven’t 

today I told you about early Israeli intelligence campaigns
planting violent antisemitism against arab jewish communities
throughout the middle east to try and force immigration, how
thriving legacies of arab jewish community were destroyed so
Israel could have numbers, numbers to be subjected to racism
and erasure to maintain the ‘arabs vs jews’ premise underlying
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine 

through tears spilling early memory of anti-arab indoctrination
you say, “I wish I could talk to him, your zeida, to understand how
he could have been a part of dreaming up something so horrible..”

I tell you that I don’t believe every teenager who joined a socialist
Zionist youth group in the 1930s dreamed of perpetrating a
genocide

I think many of them dreamed of a truly just and egalitarian society,
I think some of them dreamed of joining the arab jewish communities
in Palestine that had coexisted peacefully with their multifaith neighbors
for generations, I think some of them just wanted anywhere safe

some of them dreamed of being the ones with the guns next time… that
dream was the only one purchased, it was never the only dream

more tears and your refrain enters… “I told you the story about your
zeida’s little book right?“

miming its shape and size you say, “I remember it was yellow, his little
yellow book. If someone couldn’t pay for their groceries he would write
down their name and what they took and tell them it was okay to pay
later. It was mostly mothers with children. Your Bubi would stand over
his shoulder shaking her head, saying ‘you know they’re never gonna
pay you back’ and he would silently return his little yellow book to the
shelf under the register…

and I told you about the manager position he was offered at the factory
he worked in when they first got to philadelphia, when he was told about
the perks managers received and realized the scraps the workers were
taking home, he refused?”

“no, you didn’t” the tears come hard as you say “I think you’re right,
I don’t think any of this could have been what he dreamed of”

and then mine too because you got your wish, to talk to him