admin
People were forced to leave their homes with hastily packed bags, suitcases of memories, trunks of sorrows, old and broken, some with nameplates, but most were anonymous. They are now artifacts of misery, luggage that never left the station, separated from their owners, who went to their final destinations — tortured lives and skeletons stacked high.
They are bags packed not for a vacation, not a weekend getaway, but a journey into the dark, wearing clothes of slavery stripes, tattooed with numbers, bound and shackled, forsaken and defaced.
The luggage is all that is left to hold the victims’ scent, touch, style, the inside of their hearts, the reflection of their souls, and the proof that humanity once existed. Leather or shiny metal suitcases—round, square, or oval—were tied, snapped shut, and locked, hoping no one would trespass and access their private world.
But once the war was over, the luggage was not retrieved and became the victims’ remnants, stacked on a station’s platform with their sacred history — abandoned like orphans—lost and stolen.
________
Mark Tulin is a retired marriage and family therapist living in California. Mark has authored Magical Yogis, Awkward Grace, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories, Junkyard Souls, Uncommon Love Poems, and Rain on Cabrillo. He is featured in Red Wolf Editions, Still Point Journal, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Amethyst Review, Green Ink Poetry, White Enso, and the New England Monthly Poetry Digest. He is a Pushcart nominee and a Best of Drabble. Mark’s website is www.crowonthewire.com.