Aiden Baker

what happened at schiller’s

They say a sandwich started it all. Forty one
million deaths, slammed between two slices of
bread. What was it, then? I picture pastrami
and cabbage on dark rye, real thick. Meats and
greens and heirlooms all stuffed, swelling,
dripping juice—tell me, Gavrilo, how did it
taste? I’m sorry, maybe I’ve got this all wrong,
they served you up lamb or maybe they never
served you at all. It’s just a story we tell,
serendipitous timing at the delicatessen, dumb
luck for the young Bosnian kid. And tell me,
too, about summer when you were a boy,
running no shoes into the river and under
brown water, standing, toes in the silt. What
did you find? How did dusk smell when you
wandered home? Did you kiss your mother
goodnight? Fall asleep to sounds of Sarajevo
and imagined tomorrows, tomorrows with
swallows and sand and no black hands
shooting into cobbled streets. When you were
a boy, tucked in your bed, did you hear? The
it’s nothing it’s nothing it’s nothing rattle of
death.

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Aiden Baker lives in South Florida, where she teaches, writes and gets really sweaty. You can find her work in Sonora Review, Variant Lit, Orca and elsewhere.