Ben Sloan

Eva Braun, 3:15pm, April 30, 1945

Sitting on the sofa in the Führerbunker study
about to bite into a cyanide capsule,

you are thinking about how just forty hours ago,
less than two full days, you married this man

next to you occupied now with loading his pistol.
As he drops a bullet on the floor, curses,

picks it up, inserts it into its chamber, you realize
yours is a minor walk-on part in a drama playing out

in his mind—the role of the loyal wife of the great
if fallen leader. If only it could have been more.

The gun loaded and ready, he glances up and nods.
The look on his face says it all:  It is time. You first.

Ben Sloan has recent poems in The Tishman Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Northampton Poetry Review. His review of The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner has just been published in Rain Taxi Review of Books. Living in Charlottesville, VA, he teaches at Piedmont Virginia Community College and at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.