Jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne
(in every beginning, there's a magic)
is what the staff wrote on the wall
with a little heart behind it;

painted on another wall,
two cheerful children
faceless,
yet holding hands;
one pink-striped
the other blue.

They weren't supposed to be nightmare-fuel
for the children kept in this room;
they were supposed to be
a charming vision
of what they could be:
behold, normalcy.

The children on the ward didn't
tell the nurses how the figures
slipped free of the walls at night
moving aslant,
two-dimensional in our three,
to whisper in their ears
asking them to come play;

didn't dare tell
that the painted figures
were the ones who drew
the smiling Kästchen
on the wall beside them,
proof of their good intentions,
"Look, we have a pet,
do you want to stroke her ears,
dangle a string for her?
Come play, Klaus, come play, Gretchen—"

Instead, the nurses scrubbed at the wall,
revoked dessert for a week
to compel a confession
from whomever had really done it,
and the word Zauber started to look
more like sauber, inne more like Zimmer
especially the way the nurses said it:
every new beginning lives in a clean room,
you have to keep your room clean, children—

Then the tally marks appeared up on the ceiling
where no child could reach,
but the figures could,
sliding up the walls like shadows
"One for each day you've been here—
you know you're never going home,
your parents don't want you,
so come and play."

And the nurses screamed at them
for all the dirt, for all the marks,
and they covered their heads
and ears and curled into fetal balls
in their beds,
unable to make the adults understand
that the danger wasn't in their heads,
that they didn't have imaginary playmates,
that they didn't want to play—

and the blue figure
drew a demented smile on his face
and eyes with which to see,
and the pink figure drew him genitalia
while she giggled, "You've been here
so long, that even we
have hit puberty!
You're never leaving,
count the marks on the walls—"

"They aren't true,
you put them up in fives
and tens—"

"You don't know that,
not for sure.
Maybe these are actually
all the days you have left."

"Till I go home?"

"Don't be silly. You're never leaving.
These are the days left till you die.
Unless you come and play."

"What happens if I say no?"

"We cross them out. Just so."

And they started to scribble them out,
till Karl and Ilsa
and Mads and little Lotte,
breathing choked,
hearts pounding,
all agreed to play.