It's like 1958, or something like that, I hear him say.

I bit the joints of the pretzel

ever so carefully, leaving

only the half-heart shape;

A pretzel is a heart with a triangle

thrust through the middle

Lip reading is very delicate business and not something

you can hope to master in two months of adult education classes.

Broken arms and splintered limbs

Salt particles collect at the bottom

of the bowl, forming a mine,

a mine of crystallized thoughts;

I take another bite of the distorted heart

Fremd bin ich eingezogen

Fremd zieh' ich weider aus

(As a stranger I arrived

As a stranger I departed)

The distorted heart crackled

within the fireplace of my soul,

your words kindling, the strange triangle

of grim fear that slowly

split my central being in two

I can only remember two things, I say

That the town I lived in had no walls around it,

and that our shadows followed us wherever we walked.

Only three pretzels remain;

I crush them in my fingertips