When, in the path of a glacier, you built your town
You must have thought
You'd had 10,000 years
But 10,000 years comes before you know it
And anyways, things happen
To speed the course of events
(You couldn't have forseen, for instance,
Climate change, at the time)
I hope you understand
This isn't an admonishment
I have built my life
In much the same way.
You asked me
To wait for you
In my smooth, modal dress
The one, you'd always said, just shyly seemed to note the valleys of my body–
The dips above my hips
The curve of my lower back
You asked
That I wait for you
In our golden chair
Which made its way to me
All the way across an ocean
And a sea
All the while, the
Soft scarlet throw sent to us by my mother, still miraculously
Crumpled upon its seat
You want to know
If I'll wait for you, now,
As the evening sun falls- surrendered to the blackening hills of the Galil
And I will
I will wait,
Red lines, now drawn
Down the delicate pale of each arm.
So, I'm standing in the tortilla section at Shufersal, looking a little lost when a woman approaches, and asks, "&/'@&] tortillas?"
I take out one earbud, (ironically at the moment Joe Strummer is singing "I'm lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily",) look at her and respond,
אאאם, סליחה, אני מחפשת טורטיות ללא גלוטן
She looks at me as if I've just asked her where I might find special vibrators for ducks, so I shake my head and explain,
"אאם, לא שמעתי מה אמרת, הקשבתי למוזיקה".
She nods, still looking at me as if I'm not someone she'd necessarily trust around innocent waterfowl, and repeats,
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
I respond,
".לא, ולא רוצה, תודה"
and quickly stick Joe back in my ear.
Finally done with my shopping, I make my way to the self-checkout. By now, my tracklist has switched to "Sandanista!" and Mick Jones is singing "Somebody got murdered", a little too cheerfully, I think.
I finish bagging my groceries, and am regretting having bought the 4-pack of 1.5 litre bottles of Schweppes on a day when I didn't bring my עגלה, when the woman who oversees the self check-out bay comes over to me, holding a pen. I figure she wants to check my receipt, so I hand it to her, but she doesn't take it.
I take out an earbud, looking at her quizzically.
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
she asks.
".לא, ואני לא רוצה"
I respond, demonstrably annoyed, struggling with my heavy shopping bags.
She steps in front of me, and in Russian accented Hebrew says,
"?למה את לא רוצה"
"!סתם, ככה, אוקיי? אני לא רוצה"
I respond, and replace my earbud, before struggling towards the escalator like an aardvark, trying to do the job of two packmules who are out sick with mono.
Later that evening, I'm sound asleep, when I suddenly wake in a cold sweat. It's pitch dark in my room, and I reach out a probing hand, looking for my phone.
Squinting, I see that it's 03:43. I sigh in exasperration, and allow the hand holding my phone to drop back onto the bed, but in the midst of its arc, there in its blue light, I see something that instantly terrifies me; peering at me, out of the dark, is a face.
Panicked, I turn on my lamp, and as soon as I do, I see that there is not just one, but at least 16 older Russian women standing around my bed. They're all wearing Shufersal uniforms, and holding clipboards, and in a perfectly timed, heavily Russian-accented chorus, they speak as one:
"?יש לך ויזה שלנו"
That's when I blacked out.
Posts
All Comments
