To Anne Frank…
The girl who died
Without having lived enough
But the only girl who lived fully –
When fullness wasn’t ready for her,
Raging like a glow worm,
Sequestered
In the tightening gloom of that cardboard box,
Gnawing gently at the leaves
Of that one book again and again,
Leaving traces of her hunger on its pages
Turning fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old,
Pushing through the days
With her bright longing for
The sky beyond the blackened window.
There are some who fly into the light
Even before the cocoon can ripen
And burst open –
They don’t have time, or rules
Or time for rules
But just wings made of knowing
That sprout in their own appropriateness…
Waiting, then, is not one of the norms.
—
Anne Frank is known for her book published posthumously, “The Diary of a Young Girl”. In it she wrote about her secret life in hiding… And about the secret life of an adoloscent looking forward to life.
She was Dutch-German, of Jewish heritage. Or, perhaps, she was just a bursting star of a teenager, the kind you never forget. She died in the Holocaust of World War II.
The isolation and suppression countless beings face today is the same she lived and died in. She wrote in her diary, “I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains…”
If she were alive, she would turn 92 on June 12th, 2021 a week from now.