It’s posted on the wall
at school: Omnia quae scio
mecum fero, everything I know
I carry with me. Maybe the children
recognize the Latin words.
Some already know
the rules of addition and
subtraction, the many synonyms
for hunger, the sound things make
as they fall apart. It’s hard
to learn everything at once.
Some of them know how to listen
from the next room. Some know
how to pull their blankets
over their heads to block out
the noise. Some have decided
to invent their own story
about how they arrived here.
Some know what it feels like
to want to die. Probably by now
they have found all the good
hiding places and can tell
the difference between
a truth and a lie. They don’t need
to study or worry about
forgetting. Everything they know
they carry with them, fist and chest
and soul and bone.
—Susannah Sheffer
Susannah Sheffer is the author of Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys, as well as a poetry chapbook, This Kind of Knowing.
