Hildegard

Hildegard asked:
“Do you believe me when
I tell you that I have to eat shit?”

At church, each Sunday,
the father always sat in the front pew
while Hildegard remained standing
in the very last row, filled with shame
and not even sure she should be there,
since she felt like a whore.

The mother said to me
it can’t be true, what Hildegard’s been saying,
no one could have survived a thing like that.

She cannot say Hildegard has lied –
no more than she can say her husband lied –
She knows only that Hildegard opening her mouth
has brought suffering on the family.

“Look at the photos, after all…”
Hildegard as a baby, as a young girl, a teenager, a woman –
the photos serve the mother as proof
that there is nothing to be seen

that nothing ever happened