Paragraph
175
The
entire class turned brown, brown shirts
and little black shorts; one boy sat alone
in
blue, but not us, not one of us. We made love
in
the barrooms of
together then like perfect Christians, beatific,
we
thought being German would be enough.
That
was true romance: a stalled train,
the wheat fields bending outside
the singing forest, trees stripped of their limbs
in
perfect rows, bodies hoisted up like Angels
on
the hooks. With time, they’ve all been torn off
like silken wings breathed into dust, the pages
of
the album stripped off like printed skin,
those perfect bodies washed clean of sin.
Kit Williamson is an actor and writer living in