i saw your words.
red paint pulsating with your one-track message
bet you wielded that brush with
conviction.
i’m imagining you now, how you plunged the paintbrush
down
into a bucket of the cheap hue
the scent of acrylic making the colors go soft around you.
did they bleed into each other?
and i watch you drag the letters down
making your “j” twisted and deformed
“Jews are not wanted here.”
you knew eventually a Jewish girl would find herself confronted
by your grotesque calligraphy…
her world would go dark
and the quick-brush cadence of her musical mind would
mute.
she would recall the stench of gas
the slap-thrash commands of a man in uniform
because hate likes to echo through
pieces
of
space
and the colors around her would go soft
and bleed into each other.
Hannah Ascher is a high school junior at Brentwood School in Los Angeles, California. When she's being serious, she plans fundraisers to provide global disaster relief to low-income communities or prevent global warming. Otherwise, she tinkers with banana "nice" cream recipes, writes indie-folk songs, or takes a class at her dance studio.
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