MayPoWriMo 25

I cannot remember the stories
that should be memorialized today
because they were not told to me

However I hold in place of
an experience too horrific to verbalize
the firmest handshake anyone has given

It was a way of saying if gestures
could tell the stories of a lifetime
I survived what they put us through

Now you’re alive here before me
and this is the most important thing
I can ever do to remind you

the things I will not recall to say
they cannot take everything away