Some years before the Shoah, we had yet to see how bright our bodies could crimson within the fires they set for us. Hot as orange until the flames shone blue and white. Avivit and I were inseparable, until she was taken from me. I think of her green eyes on nights like these, buried under floorboards, how this family that hid us thought us to be sisters. Poland 1941 was fear, was blood, was bitter without Avivit. I sometimes felt her lips nuzzled in my neck, her breast on mine.

​

We knew how to hide before the war started. Learning from an early age what it meant to be Jewish and homosexual. Avivit would say to me, “my beautiful girl, how unlucky we are to have found each other now.” I remember when she would be all Avivit for me, wear my father’s tie, pin back her red hair, and perform push-ups while I perched on her back. I scout for these memories, devoured by my loneliness. 

I watched them take her from me from the inside of the cabinet below the kitchen sink. She was out of hiding when the door was broken down. Her green eyes willed wide oceans between us, without words begging me to remain unseen.

​

Now alone, I wait to perish. I fantasize the Nazis will take me, burn me like they did Avivit until we’re together again in the blue and white. Jewish like we once were. Touching without imprinting, ash within ash.