52 weeks of positivity (kinda)

Return

She stands there
In the middle of what is now a museum
Grass has grown here
Since her freezing hands picked at the leftover strands
She can't stay long
Or the barbed wire and concrete blocks
Threaten to cave her in
To crop her hair
Steal her clothes
And re tattoo the number fading on her wrist
"Arbeit macht frei"
Still emblazoned on that damm gate
Her young hands want to tear it to pieces
But her old hands can't even hold a cup properly anymore

From here,
She can just about catch sight of her block
Where she and 3 others shared the highest bunk
Shivering for survival
Where nothing was private
She can almost hear,
the roll call catching on the wind
When the numbers were the only evidence time was moving
In the endless freezing desert
Then there's a pause
When someone won the lottery
To pass away in the night

No, I'm lucky she corrects
"I survived,
My body was not on the pile to be discarded
Or sent off to the "hospital"
From where no one ever returned"
And Her mind fills
With the stories she told herself to stay sane
"Once upon a time there was a girl
Who was imprisoned when it wasn't her fault
Every day she suffered but survived "
And slowly the faces of her oppressors begin to fade 
Long ago buried in nameless graves

She takes a deep breath
"The girl found a way to escape
Leaving behind mother, father, sister friends
None of whom ever returned
Whose final screams echo through the "showers"
That only ever cleansed their pain

The girl found a new life
Free but still haunted with the chains of this place
So she promised
One day,
When time had turned her hands wrinkly
She would come back
To the concrete blocks and barbed wire
To pay her respect
For those who died
While she survived

Step by step she takes
In the footprints of her younger self
Breathing in and out
With the same air
She breathed all those years ago
And maybe, that girl promised herself
All those years ago
If she came back
Maybe that girl, this woman
Can finally leave this place