The image in the space behind my eyelids is blurred. I long to turn the lens ever so slightly with my fingertips, just enough to see their faces again.

​

Isn't it strange how important the materialistic things can seem to us? A specific shade of paint, a wall hanging. But when it all turns to dust what is left in the ashes is the desire to remember the coordinates of a face. The flecks of brown speckled within a blue eye, the way a wrinkle travels across the skin, every dent, every scar. You wish you could remember the sound of their feet shifting across the kitchen floor. That you spent more time watching the rise and fall of a chest, the soundtrack of the air, tainted by the captivity of their lungs escaping from their nostrils.

 

Now all these things are merely evaporated thoughts, escaping through the cracks of my fingers as I thrash my arms in the air, attempting to capture these memories that have emerged from their cocoons. They leave me with nothing more than an empty shell.

 

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to happen to me after I had died. Don't be so morbid Constance my mother would say, you'll scare Alfred. The cruel thing is I enjoyed scaring him. He would fill the entire house with the sounds of his screams and cries at even the mention of death. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way a sadistic person, I had just always been fascinated with the idea of death. The idea that nobody knows exactly what it is yet it is the only thing certain in this world. And now that it seems even more certain, now that I no longer have a choice what happens to me, I am not so fascinated. Poor little Alfie I would taunt. 

Poor little Alfie. He would be so scared. I trace the tips of my fingers with another, my skin still remembers the feeling of his little hands, frantically thrashing about, desperate to cling to mine. I remember the last time I saw him, I don't remember his face, but I remember the way it screamed. How it disappeared into crowds of people, all moving like a frantic body of water, spilling out of every house on the street. A chaotic storm. Each day that goes by I forget him more and more. I wonder if he has forgotten about me.

 

I don't remember much about my mother either, only the way she moved. The way she would creep into my room when she believed I was asleep. Sat on the edge of my bed, smoothing the creases in my linen bedsheets; often kissing me on the forehead before shuffling back through the dimly lit crack in the door. It is not the linen bedsheets I considered home, it was the way she would stroke them, with her fingers, like a mother does. That is what I have been torn from.

 

I wonder if they are still alive, her or Alfie. A version in my mind where they are together and safe exists. There are many other versions that exist too. But this is the one I choose to believe. Regardless of the truth. There are many things I am unsure about. Like how much longer I can continue with so little food, whether I can make it through the winter with nothing to keep me warm. I am becoming weaker by the day, more doubtful.

 

So this is for them. The last shred of energy that barely exists within me is being used to create this. This thought in my head that I hope somehow reaches them, whoever they may be now. I sincerely hope-

 

Constance Meltzer died on the 7h November 1943 from starvation in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.