The Wax Museum

Memories of the Wax Museum, 1984

The woman, reaching her hand to a man
whose head was bleeding, invoked the fear
which was difficult to assuage. The plank

we walked to get to the next exhibit grew
in dimension as flames encircled the faces
of young and old. It's not real, I said, as tears

welled like the coming tide. We crossed into
Varykino and the ice castle, a lovely woman
and handsome man standing inside the dome

 of entrapment, the subservience which comes
with the death of all they ever knew, a society
in shambles, Tsars displaced with a deadlier

mission gone wrong. This I could not explain
to my three year old daughter, who would, years
later, champion those without hope, wrecked lives

living in basements and penthouses, oppressed
by governments and friends and communities
which bend and are broken in the slightest

change in the wind, the most seemingly trite
utterances. The child encompassed in fear--
as she looked at the etched faces in the wax

museum many years ago--knows the mind's
persuasion to stay a victim or to overcome,
and has seen far beyond the reproductions,

has given her hand to those whose wounds
cannot be easily seen, has refused to let fear
be her dictate, who lives the questions.