Had I Asked, You Might Have Said
Laura Ann Reed | Poetry, Spring 2026
—after the 1881 Kiev massacre
it was the year I was ten it was spring
new leaves were unfurling
in the birch grove where I heard
the first screams
through the trees I saw
in a field not far away children
my age being slaughtered
beyond the cold wash
of disbelief I recall feeling
my own innocence like a delicate
membrane under my skin a sensation
that lasted until the moment I became
aware of the distance between me
and what I was seeing by then all
was unalterable having rushed
back to a past where it had already
happened the field already
emptied of hatchets and knives why
wasn’t I among the fallen
numbness spread through my limbs
I might even have slept leaning
against a tree before my legs would
carry me to the field I never
suspected how much blood moved
though a body how unbearable
to stare at a face I left when it began
to rain what had happened
in that place was it true
what I’d seen or was it
a story I made up to scare myself
days passed
before the field drew me
back through the birch to the site
of betrayal to the sorrow
of six small footprints traces partially
erased by rain the field otherwise bereft
of testimony an emptiness
burnished by sun
the vestiges of the
missing burned
into the nightfall behind my eyes
when it became too dark to see when
the stars
the cry of a raptor
scent of crushed lilies obscenity
of spring of comprehension
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“Like many people who have been subjected to historical or personal violence, my mother’s father would not speak of his persecution in Imperial Russia in the late 1880’s. I only hear bits and pieces of the story from my parents. My grandfather’s life-long silence in regard to the trauma he experienced and witnessed is, because I loved him, my trace fossil. This poem, which is part of a chapbook manuscript, articulates one particular instance of witnessing whose details I imagined, because he never would have recounted them to me, even “Had I Asked.”
Laura Ann Reed is the author of the chapbook Homage to Kafka (Poetry Box, 2025). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Cathexis Northwest,wildness (England), The Laurel Review, The Pasticheur: Literature, Arts & Ideas, The Jewish Literary Journal, and Trace Fossils Review, as well as in twelve anthologies including Poetry of Presence II (Grayson Books, 2023), 2026 World Poetry Day Anthology, (Moonstone Publishing, 2026) and The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023). Reed holds master’s degrees in clinical psychology and performing arts. She was born in Berkeley, California and she earned her B.A. from The University of California, Berkeley, which included a year at l’Université Aix-Marseille in France. She lives with her husband, Grant Reed, in the Pacific Northwest.
Had I Asked, You Might Have Said
Laura Ann Reed | Poetry, Spring 2026
—after the 1881 Kiev massacre
it was the year I was ten it was spring
new leaves were unfurling
in the birch grove where I heard
the first screams
through the trees I saw
in a field not far away children
my age being slaughtered
beyond the cold wash
of disbelief I recall feeling
my own innocence like a delicate
membrane under my skin a sensation
that lasted until the moment I became
aware of the distance between me
and what I was seeing by then all
was unalterable having rushed
back to a past where it had already
happened the field already
emptied of hatchets and knives why
wasn’t I among the fallen
numbness spread through my limbs
I might even have slept leaning
against a tree before my legs would
carry me to the field I never
suspected how much blood moved
though a body how unbearable
to stare at a face I left when it began
to rain what had happened
in that place was it true
what I’d seen or was it
a story I made up to scare myself
days passed
before the field drew me
back through the birch to the site
of betrayal to the sorrow
of six small footprints traces partially
erased by rain the field otherwise bereft
of testimony an emptiness
burnished by sun
the vestiges of the
missing burned
into the nightfall behind my eyes
when it became too dark to see when
the stars
the cry of a raptor
scent of crushed lilies obscenity
of spring of comprehension
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“Like many people who have been subjected to historical or personal violence, my mother’s father would not speak of his persecution in Imperial Russia in the late 1880’s. I only hear bits and pieces of the story from my parents. My grandfather’s life-long silence in regard to the trauma he experienced and witnessed is, because I loved him, my trace fossil. This poem, which is part of a chapbook manuscript, articulates one particular instance of witnessing whose details I imagined, because he never would have recounted them to me, even “Had I Asked.”
Laura Ann Reed is the author of the chapbook Homage to Kafka (Poetry Box, 2025). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Cathexis Northwest,wildness (England), The Laurel Review, The Pasticheur: Literature, Arts & Ideas, The Jewish Literary Journal, and Trace Fossils Review, as well as in twelve anthologies including Poetry of Presence II (Grayson Books, 2023), 2026 World Poetry Day Anthology, (Moonstone Publishing, 2026) and The Wonder of Small Things (Storey Publishing, 2023). Reed holds master’s degrees in clinical psychology and performing arts. She was born in Berkeley, California and she earned her B.A. from The University of California, Berkeley, which included a year at l’Université Aix-Marseille in France. She lives with her husband, Grant Reed, in the Pacific Northwest.