Me, My pencil, And the World

Anne Frank

Anne Frank

Her body had been shaking for the last hour or so.

Her mind slipped in and out of delirium. He sanity and life I could practically see leeching away into to this cursed ground where we were trapped.

Her breath came ragged, and I could see her eyes moving rapidly behind her eye lids, fluttering and whirling around like a demon had possessed the strongest person I knew.

"Peter......Mother.....Van Daans..... Margot...Mother...Father... Father!"

She would cry out, scaring those around our shadowy corner at which I crouched over Anne.

"Don't let them do this Father! Please! Take me instead! Please! I'm begging!"

She would sob, and I would sob with her, listening to her dying cries.

"Just kill her already!" One of the older prisoners would hiss out. "Kill her and be done with it!"

They would creep closer, and I would whirl upon them, an make an inhumane noise to keep them back.

I turned back to Anneke, and cried.

I kneeled over her body, so thin and frail in her bunk, and pushed her brown hair off of her sweaty forehead.

I lost track of the time I laid there, praying for her, for me, and even those who wished for her death, only so they could steal her ration of bread.

I heard a soft gasp and lifted my head. I see her eyes snap open, and clarity fill them.

Her gaze fell upon me, and she smiled faintly. A whisp of a smile crossed my lips, and I touched her cheek.

She spoke then, and the one word she whispered broke me. It broke my sanity, it broke my resolve, and it broke my soul.

"Sing."

I made a choking sobbing sound, and nodded my head in compliance.

It was her favorite thing to do, sing.

She would hum as she worked, chant as she walked around this damned place, and sing on the rare occasion we were allowed to spend time outside, in the dirt, looking up the gray sky, the sky that represented out freedom, blocked by the tall barbed wire fence.

I started to hum an old song that my mother had played on the piano back before the war.

My broken voice kept humming even after she had closed her eyes, and let out a small sigh that escaped into the world.

My broken voice kept humming even after her body had turned cold.

And my broken voice never stopped humming, even as the dawn had passed, and most of the few left had gone for the meager piece of bread they fed us for breakfast.

I was taller than Anne, and stronger, but weak. I struggled to carry out her body outside, in the cold, snow, and frozen dirt.

I stumbled towards a spot where we would always sit as she told me about her life, the two years she spent hiding in the attic with 7 others, and the stories she would invent from her mind.

Those where the stories I clung to, listening impossibly hard as I imagined my body simply lifting up of the ground, leaving this purgatory, and being free.

I set her small form down in the ground, and kneeled. I placed my palm down on the ground and looked at my friend.

"You saved my life you know. I would have killed myself long before this if it weren't for you."