You read to me the words
Of Marina Tzvetaeva
As much for the pleasure their shapes make in your mouth
As the sound of your voice
Does my ears
But you can understand them:
A luxury I can't afford
Only can I watch your face
Suffuse with the pleasures
Of nostalgia
And that alone for me is enough.
Of all things, it's an image of the roughly woven, off white, textile curtains that hang in what was my father's office, (which used to be the family room) in the Miami house that haunts my thoughts right now; this specific, and unimportant element of nostalgia, that witnessed the daily, evening ritual in the early 80s when we'd gather after dinner on the roughly upholstered couch to watch that day's episode of Guiding Light on the VCR, that- once turned from family recreation space into my father's workspace, hung silently behind my mother's back on those sleepless nights she'd play Freecell at my father's computer whilst softly listening to Schubert's "Trout" on CD, that witnessed my father's endless frustrations, cursing over computer, after computer, after computer down the years that he could never quite wrangle to his will..
Those curtains, like the corners of the produce section in the neighbourhood Winn Dixe I used to visualise on hot, lonely nights when I couldn't sleep in Kfar Habad..
When everything is threateningly unfamiliar, it's trivial things– specific and trivial, even mundane things that offer a feeling of safe familiarity. This is the true lure of nostalgia; because we have already survived the past, and the only thing the future promises, is that we won't.
Meital shifted her weight on the hard crate and looked at the tall, covered mirror her mother had once stood in front of, shifting her weight from this foot to the other, tugging this piece of her blouse and tucking in that bit; always making sure she was "just so" before walking out the door.
The neighbours, who weren't Jewish didn't know the customs of shiva, but they did all they could just the same; Mrs Fitzpatrick had brought over pizza the first night, (with pepperoni,) and Steven, the Super had brought up Cadbury chocolate eggs and yellow and pink marshmallow peeps, explaining that his wife had cleaned out the shelves at CVS after Easter, and that "everyone likes sugar!"
Meital agreed and swallowed the eggs like a starving dog once everyone had gone home.
Now, the sugar craving hit afresh as she sat, alone on the green crate and wished she hadn't finished the chocolate so thoughtlessly the night before. All that was left was the two packets of peeps.
"But they're so cute" thought Meital. "How can I eat something this cute?"
She took a yellow one out of the packet and held it in her hand. "Ok," she said out loud, "when I bite into you, you'll be born some place else, but as a real chick!" Meital had played games like this with herself since she was a girl. It was the only way she could bring herself to eat animal crackers. She ate the peeps, one after one and sucked the sugar off her sticky fingers.
"I wish that when we died, we could be born someplace far away but in a different form" she thought.
On a distant world, a new baby opened her orange eyes for the first time, as vague memories of someone named Meital quickly faded like a dream.
Unquiet, the yellow sun bursts excitedly through my window,
Already, in mid-March,
At April's softened slant;
She beckons me to walk
Down by the old churchyard
Count the shooting crocuses
Impatient as adolescence
But I cannot oblige her,
So, as if in consolation
She sets to fire all of the
Exuberant flecks of dust
That dance above my floor
In the cold, late Winter's air.
It's bright outside:
The seasonal slant of light has shifted again
Blue grey, to green gold
Already preparing us for
Early Spring bulbs to burst
Through hard ground
I sit sideways by my yellow table, eating
A crisp, late Winter's apple
The still cool air slips in under the lip of the window that won't quite close
Over the dusty rows of books lined up on my sill,
Like a younger lover, insistent I walk with her down to the river
Perfumed steam from the first floor — someone is doing laundry.
"I love other haunted people," she said, pouring our sixth cup of tea, "people who refuse to hide from their own ghosts, I feel like I can trust them."
I nodded and sipped from the small, heavy cup I held unnecessarily in both hands. We'd finished our meal what felt like hours before; the tea had grown strong, and ice cold. Outside, the snow was ankle deep. I asked the visibly impatient waiter for another pot.
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