Left Behind

     The music pattered like raindrops in my drizzly mind. My head swayed with the motion of my fingers tapping the black and white keys. A combination that I made up as I went, the music was slow and sad.
   A tear fell and slid in a crack on one of the keys. I remembered how it got there on mothers piano, this piano. My eyes flicked to the bloodstains on the once white windowsill. Papa.
   Then I remembered the screams and the horrific crack as my little brother was thrown against the sofa. Four. Josef had been just four years old--a mere baby.
   I closed my eyes, forbidding more tears to escape. Then they fell like the souled rain that dropped through the smoke of the crematoriums.
   My mind went back to those days cooped up in the rotting pigstye. I saw people dropping like harmless flies wherever I looked. There was no use to make friends, for I was certain that they too would perish, I remember the smell of burning people, the screams of tortured women, the shouts of starved people--God's people.
   The rain pattered even harder, sounding like a knock on the door. I swung around on the bench and called, "Mother?" I was still hoping she'd turn up. My only family left since my father and brother were...  Never mind.
   We were persecuted because of a blood, a word, a title no one wanted. Jew.
   I opened my eyes and tears slid down my cheeks like the bursting of a dam, Deep in my heart I knew Mother wasn't coming back. I knew I was alone, and needed to learn to live this way. I have no longer been left to die. My family was. But I, Ruth Aaron, was left behind.