The Unsaid

I stood at the gate
You asked if I wanted a picture
I had wished not to come
You were aggrevating my uneasiness

He has resisted coming
I knew exactly why
But was not facing it a way of
Burying his head in the sand?
I had wondered also why
He did not want to enter the synagogue
Or the cemetary of broken tombstones
Where bodies mingled be
Was he afraid
Of the emotions that would flood?
Or was it simply him uncomfortable
With thinking about the dead?

You saw my face and knew the answer
And walked behind me in silence
We had come and we were prepared
An awkward chill went through me
I looked at the faces on the walls
And thought of the mothers' pain
Of losing their seventeen-year-old sons
Then it hit me, they were killed too
Who is left to grieve now?

My stomach churned and anger rose within me
When I saw tourists taking photographs
Posing with instruments of death,
With artifacts of torture
To them this was just another tick
On the checklist of their visit to the country
A photograph of proof
That they have stepped into this historic place
Could they not respect the dead?
Have they no understanding of
What happened there?
Are they the embodiment of
What went wrong
When people ceased to be humans
And instead became serial numbers?
If silence is an admission of defeat
How is telling any better
When the audience does not feel?

Either way we have failed.