I was always alone at A* but I wanted to be a tour guide, to gather others around me and walk with them and tell them stories, to show them the edges, the hinterland, the connective tissue, the limina, the penumbric spaces.
I wasn’t interested in the flora, I passed over it without seeing, without noticing. Did birds sing in Birkenau? I can’t say, I didn’t hear them but that may be because I never thought to listen. I was interested in the birches, the trees from which Birkenau took its name.
I was changing and was changed by A*, it tugged at my roots.
I walked over it as it slumbered in the soil, dug in, holding fast against modernity.
