Your Two Faces

Your two faces unfaded,
two voices never silenced
speak in my mouth,
formless then growing
as you grew in my body--
faces, organs, limbs
reaching forward to live,
but backward to survive,
for the skin of generations
covers you my schtetl children,
even exiled from ancestry,
even exiled from me.

I labor in this separating,
which goes on through years,
through distance still
overwhelming me to push, push
you into the light always

your two faces haunt me.