The Anniversary

Imagining walking in others' shoes makes it hard to breath sometimes.

You think you know people. Well, at least you hope you know who they are much in the same way they think they know themselves. .

You have a normal life; happy one moment, sad the next and always trying. You have fond memories of the space you occupy and the places you roam. You nod to the ones you think you know in the market place. You smile in the theatre and exchange pleasantries in the playground and steal affectionate glances during intermissions in concerts.

You break bread with enough seemingly gentle people to feel at home and comfortable despite the whispers.

There are whispers.

There have always been whispers. It comes with the territory, you think. Some don't know any better and some might; and yet, it is hard to get them to stop. What can you do? How many fist fights? Life goes on really as it has always.

And whispers find echoes and suddenly the discombobulating fever pitch.

Some of the very same people you thought you knew-- your colleagues, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and those familiar faces around the playground and the market place no longer appear to you as you remembered.

Nothing is at it should be. You can count on nothing familiar.

The structure of your universe has been reconstituted radically even though the elements you'd always taken for granted are still visible. In your heart of hearts you always feared it might come to this, but could it be really happening now?

Somehow, the same disciplined, directed passions that made for the performance of a moving Mozart piece suddenly unleash to orchestrate transportation to camps where some of the ones dearest to you along with countless others are exterminated, en masse, with ruthless efficiency.

Light, heat, silence and eternal darkness.

Hills of hair. Undying shame.