THOSE WERE THE RULES

Those were the rules. We had to leave the children
with others. Complete strangers.
For half the day.
They were forbidden to talk for hours on end,
forbidden to laugh. Those were the rules.
Everyone sent their children.
It was the reasonable thing to do.
No one wanted to seem crazy.                  

Too easy
to judge us now,
from a distance in time and space.

We didn’t know then
what you know today.

אלה היו החוקים

אלה היו החוקים