It’s Shabbat morning and myhandsfind
a tattered copy of a Yiddish book, The Dybbuk.
It still smells of cologne. There’swriting
on the first page, barely legible.
I squint and read: Chaim Baum – August 30, 1939

Whose hands did this book pass through?
Which pile of belongings left behind
would find it here? Next to a bound
Kieslówski script, Mein Kampf in Russian.

I want to believe this is a fluke,
this is just a second-hand shop, not
a museum of stolen objects.

So I wander over to the large oak table in the middle of the store
layered three rows deep with women’s jewelry.
Each has a handwritten card with their year of origin scrawled in messy script.
1898. 1926. 1939. 1942. 1943. 1944. 1944.

I want to scream at the other shoppers
ignorantly examining each item for its worthiness
just like their ancestors examined mine.

But instead, I sit in a burgundy chair in the corner of the store
and quietly recite the Mourner’s Kaddish:
Y’hei shlama raba min-sh’maya
v’chayim alienu v’al-kol-yisrael

I slip Chaim’s book into my bag,
and wait for my friend to finish shopping.

Daisy Friedman is a senior at Barnard College, majoring in Film Studies. Her poetry has been published in Best Nebraska Teen Writing 2020 and the Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2020 National Scholastic Gold Medal in Poetry, 2020 American Voices Award, and the Recipient of five Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards in Poetry, Memoir, and Screenwriting.