Lublin

Dear Heniek,

This is a love letter. 

I know that may sound strange because you are long gone, because we have never met. 

But this is a love letter that I hope finds you well.

I wanted to say that in Lublin, I felt your presence –

And your ringing absence too.

I walked through that place where someone you loved snapped a photo of you with your mother

And your father too.

I walked to that place 

where you clutched your knobby knees with your doughy hands.

I might have walked through the cobblestones where your house once stood 

Where you might have once walked potbelly-first basking in your family’s delight,

Where you learned your first words,

Where you learned what Judaism was and was not.

Dear Heniek,

This is a love letter.

I know that may sound strange because you are long gone, because we have never met.

A love letter to tell you that someone knows that you were a person.

That someone knows you noticed details of your life – 

your likes, your dislikes, 

the thrill of the open market square, boredom and grey emotions, 

the hardness of pews, the warmth of a human body, 

the palace on the hill,

the vastness of the unknown, 

or maybe the delight of predictability.

Or perhaps a smile flickering in the black of the ghetto.

Dear Heniek,

This is a love letter.

I know that may sound strange because you are long gone, because we have never met in person. 

I know it may sound strange to say that I met you 

after you were as some say

Resettled, transported, contained, and exterminated.

That I met you after people who lived their lives as 

acts of subtraction and division 

watched your ashes dissipate into the silenced landscape.

But dearest Heniek,

This is a love letter,

A toast to the sound of your soul,

A moment of silence to acknowledge that you were.

I hope you found some place to rest,

Perhaps among those slender and bony birch trees,

Perhaps where you cling to walls of family homes, bearing witness to their daily life.

But most of all, I hope

That you are still somewhere 

Dressed in all white – 

Experiencing normality, relief, and delight. 

Ariana Lee '15