Those Who Save Us

by Jenna Blum

and trying to stand on top of you in an instinctive effort to get more air, even though they are really climbing toward the gas. You will not know what you want your last thought to be, nor be able to fix one in your head, and in the end it will not matter: you will be one of a pyramid of anonymous corpses that they will remove from the chamber with rakes, entangled so tightly with strangers that they will have to walk among you and separate you forcibly. And then they will burn you. They will burn you: you, your body, your own beloved and maddening body with its quirks and birthmarks, its trick knee or double-jointed thumb, its scars each with its own story; the body that you and others have nursed through colds and fevers; the body whose digestive processes have provided the visceral rhythm for your days; the body that it has been your goal in life to feed and clothe and shelter; the body that only your mother and your lovers know better than you. They will burn your brain with its magnificent network of neurons, in which are stored memories and hard-earned philosophies, books you have read and sights you have