"To Be Deutsche" By Daniel Boyko

Photo by rashid khreiss on Unsplash

Red faces yell in German. Not the kind

that the young Berlin entrepreneurs shout

into freshly bought iPhones, but the old German

that’s lost to an age pre-World Wars.

That’s how it’s always been with Grandma

and Grandpa, or Oma and Opa. I don’t actually

know any German. But I know enough to know

that they’re cursing at one another, as I’m catching

a word here and there. It’s more watching,

studying their facial expressions than knowing

the language. They only speak German

when they don’t want me to understand

what they’re saying. If you didn’t watch

the words smoothly flow from their tongues

like a diving round of robins, you’d never know

where they’re from. Yes, Grandma and Grandpa

still eat cow tongue, but they never tell stories

of the old world. I don’t hear about the Austrian villages

they grew up in, how everyone knew each other’s 

birthday. “Nazi” and “concentration camp” are forbidden

words. And who can blame them? Their heads shake 

whenever they think those thoughts, a film reel 

of memories they’ve tried to burn and forget.

The images of faces coated with ash

and acrid smoke; a parent’s palm waving

goodbye for the final time. I don’t know

what it was like to come over to a new land

with cold winters and not enough green bills.

And I probably never will. I might sink

my teeth into their Niederegger Marzipan

and Russisch Brot cookies, but I can never wear

the word “Austrian” like they can, like a hand-

stitched sweater. The only time their memories

ever left the chambers of their minds

was when my great-uncle told their story

for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

But even if I saw the video and watched

the writhing pain on my uncle’s face,

I still wouldn’t understand the German.

I wonder if a part of me is lost with the language?

Daniel Boyko lives in Short Hills, New Jersey; he is 17 years old. Daniel writes to say that he is Co-Editor in Chief of Polyphany Lit and that wherever his dog is, he won’t be far behind. Check out Daniel’s other poem, “The Zoo Life,” also in The Telling Room’s Stories.