One strap wraps itself just under the tattoo Auschwitz gave you, wise and horrible Auschwitz, keeping itself alive, in a small way, on your arm. Memory is a kind of ruin. The tube in your throat makes it impossible for you to speak, your eyes do the work, bore through us and plead. Occasionally, you write a word on a blank white page, pencil shaking in restrained fingers, barely pressing against the page, almost illegible marks which we try gravely to make out. And your strapped hands, they too, gesture and implore.
Memory is a kind of terror.
Your first baby, Bina Rachel, born in Tarnopol Ghetto in 1940. And died there, exactly one year later, on Yom Kippur. A natural death. Language tortures us. Relative to the other deaths, meaning she died in your helpless, hungry arms.