Remember

Sharp little teeth, cosy together.
Running a fingernail down these, I realise it is
almost musical; such a queer sound it omits.
Hard peach plastic, it possesses no real scent
and could so easily be replaced by another, yet is
essential in my preparation for each new day.

Just another thing I need,
an item so mundane. So trivial
it would otherwise seem not to matter at all.
Impersonal and devoid of personality,
but, in its own way, it stands for
so much more, others of identical mould.

An insignificant alteration of colour, now blue.
My eyes in this memory adjust quickly from the stunning white
that shields a haunting, cowering terror.
The cold penetrates the very heart of this place,
beseeching us to remember.
Regardless of tongue the object is the same.

For there it is: blue, harsh plastic, essence of the everyday,
neighbour to the suitcases, cheese-grater, plates, saucers.
One illustration of the ordinary calls out to one visitor, and another to another:
it is this that caught my eye.
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Perhaps the hair it once smoothed
lies here also, its link with an individual - a name - severed.

Without a doubt the owner of this object,
this plastic item, so similar to that which I had used that hopeful morning
was prepared for the resettlement they had been assured.
It was for the other mornings they would see in,
the other mornings that would stretch into evening, and then
morning again.

No.

That was the end of the mornings.
This comb had sufficed in all its purpose, the nameless
shorn like some pitiful sheep, and no longer of the watching world.
I do not know where they found that comb exactly;
it could have been within the boundaries of that frozen white exterior
that we were so glad - fortunate - to escape.

Whisked away onto those warm puttering vehicles,
uncomfortable to the opposite temperature extreme.
We were leaving where so many others had not.
The testimony of these lost voices, frozen in time,
immortalised in these plain images of the everyday;
they had taken them for those other mornings that never were.

Any person who has seen that place would, could never forget
that bitterly cold nightmare, relevant even for
our future. We will never forget.
On every one of my other mornings I will take my comb
from the bedside table where it sits;
in remembrance tiny teeth chatter.