Smoke

In my mind the camps were always

black and white. When did it strike me

that sometimes, over the barbed wire

and watchtowers, the sky was blue?

When I browse black and white photos

of my parents, I see my mother's eyes,

that surprising ice blue none of us inherited;

my dad's curly red hair which my sister had

and hated. She tried to iron her hair straight.

Once her jacket caught fire when she leant back

against the cooker in our small suburban kitchen.

The stink of singed hair.

Judith Shaw