Deepest Afflictions to Random Speculations

Voices of the Wind: a Holocaust Poem

Flashes.
White streaks stretching across my memory—
I can see them,
The blue digits.
They scar my arm as they scar my soul.
They seem to consume me—
Entrapping me in a snare of endless bloodshed.
I—
Their prisoner,
Them—
My captor.
I—
The deer,
Them—
The forever approaching headlights.
The moment it seems as though they would crash into my dilapidated, crippled form—
A sad excuse for a carcass—
They are once again 500 yards off.
It is an endless cycle.

All of this, a mere mental battle.
Yet I—
my lifeless corpse walks among the moving bodies
That sing—
And dance—
And smile—
And laugh—
With all the signs in recognition of life.

He approaches me—
A man.
From the opposite side of the street.
He runs—
He shouts—
Prancing toward me with exuberance.

I think he knows me—
Yes.
I can see his face.
I can hear his voice.
Like a shadow in the dark he protrudes—
Shooting forth in my persistent battle of memories—
Of blue digits.

"Don't you recognize me?"
His voice is cracked—
like the crunching ice beneath our bare feet in the dead of winter.
"I'm your brother, don't you recognize me?"
Brother?
I know not the word.
It slips off of my tongue like fire, foreign and unwelcome.

But his eyes are like mine—
His voice—
Caressing my ears like a wind blowing forth from yonder childhood.
I know him—
Or else,
I knew him.
The stranger I make him out to be
Is lesser so than his name may hold.

In the midst of battle, I dare say his name is one that has long since served my lips.
His name—I think I recall—
Is Brother.
In regards of me, his name is Brother!
Long lost and long forgotten, he has found me—
I dare say I think I see a light beyond my misery.