At the edge of a drowsy afternoon nap
Rumbles- made softer by distance And were this not August, in
Northern Israel
They might be thunder
Indistinguishable but for this context.
I close my eyes, and drift off into them Something like the sea
Bigger than me.
Not ten seconds
Past ten minutes
After the last audible blast,
Already, outside
Trucks beep as they reverse
Wolt scooters rev to life
(At first, I swear, they sound almost like azakot)
Horns blare, and
Impatient workers shout over the din
As if nothing of potential great consequence had just happened
As if all of this was completely normal-
Our fragile lives, dependent
Upon a technology that
Still feels like a miracle
And although I, a sceptic,
Do not believe in miracles,
Here I am, now
Showered and dressed
Legs tucked beneath me, hot
Coffee on the couch
And from my window
The bay looks particularly blue today
Stark Mediterranean contrast to the
White roofs that lay like low tables between us
And the red and white
Candystriped arms of the bay port cranes
Turn the world from my window into
"le Tricolore"
I pour a second cup from my Moka pot
And turn up The Beatles
To dance with myself
The small, white puffs
That had punctuated the sky
Have already dissipated
No longer distinguishable from
Ordinary clouds.
Inbar Frishman
Friday, 27 September, 2024
09:23hr, Haifa
Up here, on Carmel
Above Haifa Bay
The early Fall wind is a
Loud, yowling banshee
Poking long fingers through cracks
And cracked windows
Below in the street
And under the cars
Heat cats
Join in on her chorus
(Out of sync)
But Boisterous as Berlioz'
"L'imperiale" !
Just now, I ran to do my
Sink full of dishes
It's been building, and
Haunting me, this task,
For days, but
Having heard Al Adha through my bathroom's open window,
I thought, "Maybe a break in the uncertainty
Before the alarms might
Abruptly wail again
And I'd have to abandon my task, and run
To the place where I've done so much waiting of late."
But also,
It's a noisy task-
Doing the dishes.
Apart from the sound of the running water, there's the
Claques and din of wet dishes colliding
I've been afraid, you see, I'd thought
I might miss the alarms- they're not
Always that audible, but
Emboldened by the
Thought– "they'll be busy praying"
I set out to conquer my
Own Mt Everest.
Whoever would have thought that
Doing the dishes
Would become a task I looked forward to?
I've just woken up after far too little, poor quality sleep, to reports of the suicide of another Nova survivor, and already, the day has its cold, clawed hand wrapped around my thoracic spine.
I can't believe it's been almost a year.
In 40 days, it will be a year.
A year of our burnt, crushed and crumbling innards struggling to keep us alive, while the world mocked us.
A year of waiting for the pain to lessen– even only a little bit.
A year where our souls have transformed into something we'd never thought we'd own in these generations,
And now, another family's first year has been reset to zero, where it all begins again.
And I can't keep up with the dishes in the sink.
And the scrubby sponge I replaced just last week already smells sour.
And I–
I have to shower, get dressed and do my makeup so I can get to the lawyer's office,
but the gravity of the day
Is nothing compared to that of the void.
I swim furiously against it, in the
Non-substance of hypoxic air.
I need to feel something nice today. For a while now, I've been staying in bed, not because I'm physically unable to function (at the moment,) but because I've been deep in trauma response and depression. This is a bad way for me to be, because if I don't interrupt it, inevitably, I'll spiral into inertia to the point where that familiar little voice begins chattering away in my ears, telling me that the only way out of this rut is to die, and that's really not what I want. I'm not ready.
It's like an addiction, suicidality; it's the soft, warm, comforting place to which I invariably disappear in the face of overwhelming helplessness. It's the only place wherein I feel I have agency, when existence is too painful, or even simply too much.
It's a constant, patient, unjealous lover who courts me with promises of certainty and commitment, where otherwise, none can be found.
I'm not ready though. I've other loves to explore, and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that when I am, she'll be there, close enough for me to surreptitiously reach out behind me- even with just my fingertips, and ever attentive, she'll take my signal, then she'll take my hand and gently say "come my love, let's go home".
I desperately need someone to invade my life,
Stuffing rolled up bundles of
Boisterous beauty in all its corners
To hide them in crevices I might not see for years,
In backs of shelves,
Behind boxes and stacks of papers
And stuffed into the toes
Of old shoes and boots
Small, soft gifts to discover in
Moments such as this
When hungry,
I hunt on hands and knees
Candle and feather,
(even for crumbs)
But all that I find in these
Strange, dusty corners,
For what it's worth
Someone else's ghosts
An insincere, and
Badly rendered copy of
That which I'm missing.
It's hard to turn a house into a home when you're alone.
There's no shared memories
Stacked haphazzardly in corners,
Nothing to soften the sharp echos of
Bare foot slap on hard tiles
I make my dinner at my kitchen counter,
Alone
Cut small tomatoes into plastic bowl
Add in
Olive oil and garlic,
Then pasta and toss with
Pepper and cheese
I light the shabbat candles for the first time in my new apartment
But the light here isn't golden and warm
There's a blue cast to it that
Haifa's lights outside my dark window mirror- cold diamonds tossed across a
Black, velvet valley that swallows light
And there's none of the mess from our shared life here
These walls seem extra bare, and that and the high ceilings sharply contrast with the
Warm, jewel-tone painted walls of our New York City apartment.
Carrie
I'm so afraid that in the move, I might have
Left your ghost behind.
I imagine you
Sitting alone in our disheveled nest
Amidst too many books and too much unopened mail crowding every surface.
Google tells me that that mess is 5731 miles away,
But that's probably from JFK to Ben Gurion
And after all
The Upper East Side isn't Queens
And Haifa isn't Lod
So it's probably even further when you consider
I wonder if maybe you might still find me in the placelessness of dreams–
(I wish you would)
And when you do, will you
Please hold onto the back of my skirt's waistband
The way you used to
(Teasingly, I thought)
when you didn't want me to leave the house
You see,
I know myself
How easily I can be
Hypnotised by those
Cold, Blue lights
And how, forgetting my step
Fall headlong
Into that
Bottomless, black velvet valley that swallows light.
I'm having a bad CFS day, symptoms wise. It's after 4:00 here in Israel, and I haven't yet been able to get out of bed, or even to sit up.
I had so many dreams about Carrie: that I'd picked her up from work on the bus, but we were on a strange bus together that was taking us further and further away from home.
At some point, I had to get off the bus, and go back to our apartment, while she continued on.
When I got there, the hallways of the building were clogged with the remnants of disassembled boxes. I made it into our apartment, and began the painful task of selecting, and packing up our books, knowing that I had to leave this place too.
I really miss her right now. It's a physical ache. I would give my right arm to be able to hug her again. To press my face into her neck and inhale her.
These are moments I don't know how I've managed to survive her death, or how I can continue to do so, eventhough I know that that's exactly what I have to do.
Baby steps on tender, cut-up feet that refuse to heal.
A minor international incident occurred today in Rami Levy: I'm in the chumos section, when all of a sudden, the siren: red alert!
A guy and I make eye contact, as I ask, "?יש פה מיקלט" ("is there a shelter nearby?")
A woman in a hijab abandons her cart and runs; another woman in a mesh top with tattoos does not abandon her cart, but also runs.
The man with whom I'd made eye contact, calmly walks over to my cart, as I too am considering abandoning it and running– SOMEWHERE, and I figure, he probably knows I'm about to split and he just wants to take my watermelon, (because it's a really perfect watermelon, practically worth taking your chances in a Chizbullah missile attack,) but no: he picks up my backpack, which I'd placed in the cart, opens the top pocket, and pulls out the culprit: my phone.
The red alert was in Majdal Shams.
He smirks, as I melt into the floor tiles.
So, last night, while Iran was sending us suicide drones and ballistic missiles, I was hiding out next to our bomb shelter, with one of the sweetest guys I've ever met, Samir Khoury.
Yes, Samir is an Arab.
Yes, I am a Jew.
No, it wasn't awkward, or weird, or tense. Samir did everything in his power to distract me from what was going on, (not that I was particularly freaked out, but Samir is a good host.)
He made us good Arabic coffee, and gave me his penultimate cigarette, which refused to stay lit for some reason, so I kept asking for his lighter.
"Stop asking," he said, "you aren't a guest, just say 'give me fire'", so I did.
When it was time for the "all clear" around 4 this morning, I began picking up the glass cups, with their layers of mud in the bottom, to wash.
"What are you doing? You don't have to wash them, just leave them, I'll take care of them" he said.
"Hey, " I answered, "stop treating me like a guest."
"Ok, so maybe you do the rest of the dishes in the sink?"
"What do I look like, your maid?"
People in the West seem incapable of imagining any world where we, Jews and Arabs live side by side, and not only appreciate one another's company, but genuinely love one another like family, and yet, this is as much a reality as the other extreme, and a far preferable one at that.
Did I mention that Samir is my landlord, by the way?
One of the most frustrating aspects of the protestors in the West is that they are so intent on spreading this narrative that we are natural enemies, that the animosity is an inevitable result of us mixing, but it's not. Not everything in this world is friction.
Had one of Ali Khameini's missiles gotten through to Haifa this morning, Samir and I could have died together; same fate, Arab and Jew, both of us Israelis, equal under the law.
Like I said in a previous post, there are many sociocultural problems here, and yes, there is racism, (show me someplace where there isn't!) and yes, we need to work on it. And we are. Stop trying to divide us, to drag us backwards.
This city, at dawn
Belongs to the birds, and I trust them
Far more than an app on my phone; I know
If suddenly a thousand wings frantically pummel the air
Outside my open window
My soul will follow them
No gentle, soft things,
Practical, stoic things, they are warriors
And I feel protected under their wings.
They are busy at serious business this morning
A silly, yapping dog across the redandyellow rooftops knows this
He's concerned
They're convening their war council
Making their plans; I'm an interloper
Who wandered blindly into their territory
They know this
I've heard them talking, and
I'm grateful my hosts have bigger fish to fry.
Some impressions and thoughts on coming back to Israel after so long:
Haifa is really beautiful. The air feels like some vital nutrient my body's been woefully missing and craving for years, but settling for something artificial in its stead.
The morning light feels "correct".
The pigeons constantly threaten to fly in through my open window, only to turn suddenly, within its frame and disappear; they're loud, both in wing flapping and coos.
The word that keeps coming to mind when I try to describe what being back feels like, is "normal"; it's both disappointing and promising.
There are so many Arabs here. It's honestly wonderful. There's no apparent suspicion of interpersonal animosity or awkwardness, only warmth, a sense of community and equity, and an apparent, almost passionate desire to support one another, like family: Arab and Jew alike. The outside world's accusations of apartheid feel laughable from here. On a separate note, I want to learn Arabic; it seems like the right thing to do, and a considerate way to honour this sense of fraternity/sorority.
It's not heaven, not by a longshot. I don't think it's the greatest place in the world. I've no desire to wax poetic about it, in fact, to do so would feel like a dishonest disservice; if you love someone, truly love them, it's not because they're perfect, but because, in their imperfection, they're perfect for you. I may be falling in love again with this strange, normal, troubled, embattled, misunderstood place that nostalgia had, for so long, rendered a series of flat, simplistic elements.
When my mother died, my father spent his time waiting.
He watched TV, and he waited.
He had his coffee and bowl
Of Dole grapefruit every morning, and he waited.
He slept each afternoon for hours, ate his Lean Cuisine dinners, fed Jack, then was back in bed by eight each night to watch more TV before falling asleep by 9, only to wake again at seven, and do it all again.
When Carrie died, I thought
All that was left to me was to wait.
To fill my laborious days with
Small distractions.
I wrote
And I waited.
I slept
And I waited.
I scrolled on Facebook, and YouTube, bought things I didn't need, tried to fill the hole she left, and I waited.
On October seventh,I woke to a world that had
Torn off its mask, and
I couldn't wait anymore.
It's why I'm coming home.
Not to die, but finally to live.
I have waited long enough
To
Become
No more; it's time instead,
To be.
I have signed the papers.
I will sweep this heavy, grey dust from my wings, and
Fly Again
Toward blue, open air.
In a dream I saw myself
High in the branches of a
Cherry blossom tree
I read a book
My mother's book, I was so Young, unjaded; free
I said be
Ware, those thin branches are stronger than they look
They'll break your bones, even as they
Break beneath you
And at this tree's base
You'll lie bleeding
Defeated
These beautiful blossoms have
Tasted others' blood
After all,
This is why they are this particular shade
Of pink.
Behind me, it stretches
Sometimes frayed, but never detached,
This root
Five thousand years long
There are knots here and there of varying size and complexity, and
Sometimes parts, worn so thin as to be imperceptible to the naked eye
The colours change
From greyed browns to the
Vividest orange
––
Today
There is a new orange sundress– bought on a
Cold, rainy March day in New York for
Slow April coffees in Tel Aviv
And hot, humid, impatient waiting at bus stops
And (Hopefully)
Slow evening walks along the tayelet
––
It's true, I have lost so much
What I'd thought were my actual roots
My parents
My love
Artifacts of lives lived
My sense of safety, and
I will lose yet more
This is only inevitable
Yet the root will remain
Anchored deep in five thousand years of soil
And when finally, I too
Am soil
This is my prayer:
That fresh shoots should spring up from what was me
And the young eat the fruit I'll have left behind.
There's a page on Facebook that showed up in my suggestions, that's all about Miami Beach from the 50s - the 80s, and, scrolling through all the pictures, I'm filled with a visceral, and often painful kind of nostalgia. There's a certain blue-ish yellow cast to the light in these pictures, and I can feel the strong, acidic sun on my sunburnt arms and back; I can smell the Solarcaine, and the way the old hotel rooms smelled: slightly musty, and extra air conditioned, and with 40 plus years of old cigarette smoke and suntan oil and perfume still clinging to their blackout curtains.
I remember the summer we were on Hollywood beach, and that scratchy, white, gauze shirt I wore daily. It was the summer that "Personal Best" came out, and I was 12, or 13, or 10, and I remember running on that beach, wanting to be Mariel Hemingway, feeling both excited, because her character was like me, and wanting to celebrate this visibility by embodying it, yet hoping that nobody would be able to tell that that was what I was doing, afraid of the possibility of exposure of such an intimate truth.
I remember how- in the evenings, at Rascal House, my shirt still stuck to my body from the combination of heat and sweat and suntan lotion and Solarcaine, as I pulled the pumpernickel and onion rolls from their basket, scooping out their insides with a probing index finger and stuffing them full of the delicious "health salad" from the stainless steel bowls. I remember feeling exotic, with my wild curls untamed, my tan, and the carved, coconut wood, monkey head pendant I wore on that trip tight around my throat, a souvenir from one of the open front shops along the boardwalk.
So much triggered by images of a gone time.
The pain is in the reminder of the many things lost that I'd taken for granted. The quiet presence of my father, before life had made him bitter; my mother's fat, soft hand on my side as I- sleepy from a day in the sun, lay my curly head in her lap. The innocence and hope and naive belief that nothing would ever really change that much, because the now, back then was so interminably long.
It all feels so close still, as if by turning my body in some, certain way, I might still reach out, and touch it, but it's gone. Even the places in which these memories are set have disappeared, and the people, and the culture that they'd embodied, gone. Gone.
Gone, and I think–
I shouldn't stare at these pictures anymore for now. The past has a way of seducing us with its idealised perfection, and I know myself far too well; I'm in grave danger of drowning in that blue-yellow light.
Can we please speak again of other things, like
How the delicate blossoms of the almond trees always remind you of my favourite Van Gogh, or
How the brave lupines have already returned
Painting the drowsy Jerusalem hills in purple?
Do you remember, my love, that soon the markets will be filled with baskets of dark, shiny cherries
(Your other favourite reason for stained fingertips, remember?)
Would you tell me how pretty I look in my
Old yellow sundress
Eventhough I've pulled it, wrinkled
From the bottom of the clothes pile in the corner,
How you've missed my shoulders in sunlight
Can we please just speak of
Something soft for a moment
I know well how our world is burning
But must we constantly sit by in its
Scorching heat?
Others will surely watch it. Meanwhile, my love, look up
The harsh, winter light has already changed her slant.
Broken
A stone in fragments I
Return to the land
Coarse dust
Hoping that she will remind me
How once, I knew
How to put myself back
Together again
But she too is broken
(A finer dust)
And maybe I'm going home
After all
To be
Dust amidst dust
Here in this world of
Whole Hard Stones
I fall
Settle lost between cracks
But at home
I am buoyed, as
Only the wadi wind knows how to do.
Please, don't ever
stop
pointing out the
cracks in the walls
where sunlight leaks in;
on my own,
I only know how to see
locked doors.
דברו איתי על האופן שבו כל הנשמות מנוקות לאחר שאנו משאירים מאחורינו את בשרנו; ספרו לי כיצד כאב ואובדן ושנאה וכל הדברים הנוראיים האלה הם רק חלק מהחוויה הארצית שלנו
אין לי מושג אם אאמין לך או לא, אבל יהיה סיפור נחמד
💔
I
Like some old ram-
shackled stone house, am
Haunted
Not only by ghosts of a life once lived
Of people who I have loved and lost
But by a life I lack even the
Pluck to meet.
If only she would court me gently on softened steps so as
Not to spook me or send me running toward
Nightmares, and fantasies of
Needless sleep
I might love her
I might lay down beside her and
Welcome her into my body
But she is brusque
And loud
Inconsiderate and more and more inconsiderable
And I am growing impatient with her ways.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how lately, several times a day I have to forcibly keep myself from downing my generous cache of oxy and xanax, more out of terror at an uncertain future, than simple hopelessness.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how the only way I can see myself surviving beyond this, or any given week, is if somebody came along and took me by the hand and promised to help me to navigate this nightmare world as if I was a child.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how I'm as terrified that someone will offer me help, as I am that no one will.
If I could be honest with you, I mean, really, really honest, I'd tell you how what terrifies me is the thought that whoever offers me help will come to realise that I'm a fraud of a human being
Not even plastic, but paper
So easily torn
So easily torn to shreds.
I had decided
That for the sake of self preservation
I'd regard the New Year as insignificant, to
Do nothing to mark the occasion
And yet
In the upper right-hand corner of my phone's screen, it reads
"11:48"
And I feel as though the seconds are ticking down to my execution.
11:49
I wish it would pass
Unceremoniously as any other night
But this night is different from
All other nights;
On this night, the heel of a boot grinds into me
The coarse white ashes of my previous life
Abrasive
Leave tender, and bloody, and raw indentations.
11:52
11:53
Alone.
11:54
בדד
11:55
לעולם ועד
11:56
חלאס
נמאס לי
Enough.
Sometimes, in the midst of that strange, dreamless sleep between dreams,
An image
Some random, mundane object that was a fixture in my parents' house pops into my head, and my body jerks violently awake, short of breath, heart pounding.
It's all gone.
The enormous "I'll Drink To Anything" mug that held two regular mugs worth of coffee
The green, oval cigar tin from the middle section of the downstairs medicine cabinet
The enormous, wooden headboard in my parents' bedroom that made a specific sound I've never heard replicated, when it banged against the wall whenever someone sat on the bed
Gone.
All this familiar ephemera–
Elements of a world I once knew, sacred only for their profanity
Things affixed firmly in time, place, soul
This world in which I now find myself can only be characterised by familiarity's absence
I reach out in all directions
Try to snatch "home" elements from the aether.
They cost so much
None of them are the same.
The moon
Takes note
Remembers
The sun
Boisterous, hopeful thing
Is unbothered.
For once
Let us dance together
Under the sun
Plant sweeter grapes
Grow stronger grains
We'll let the moon
Keep her records
The times our vineyards were barren
Our fields dry and cracked
And one day, we'll gather together
Eat good bread dipped in olive oil
Eat sweet, cool grapes
And read, but the
Pangs of our hunger
Will be too distant anymore to hurt us.
When I hear you say,
That "Zionism is Terrorism"
I understand:
You want me to hate myself for
The crime of existing. You
Want me to apologise for the
Crimes of your ancestors.
I'm a betrayal; an indictment of your
White Guilt
I'm your scapegoat
How dare I refuse to comply?
Thursdays are bad.
It's on Thursdays, I do my shot, so it's like I get PMDD every week, which is particularly strong on Thursdays.
This particular Thursday marks one year since my partner passed, and is two days before what would have been our 19th anniversary.
On this particular Thursday, 1,538 beloved members of my family have been murdered since 7 October, and so much of the world doesn't seem to care at all.
On this particular Saturday, I've received my third Facebook restriction for talking about this fact.
On this particular Thursday, I'm tired.
On this particular Thursday, I badly want to rest.
On this particular Thursday, I went and took inventory of the pills I've squirreled away, or rather, I held the amber, plastic bottles in my hand and read their labels; my late father's Oxycodone, and my own amassed fortune of Alprazolam. It was comforting, but
On this particular Thursday, I quickly put them away, lest I forget to resist my own hand.
On this particular Thursday, I'd promised myself I'd do the dishes piling up in the sink, make the bed, and put away the laundry, so that I could get to the rest of the laundry that I desperately need to do, but I've done none of this.
Instead
On this particular Thursday, I'm going back to bed.
Maybe sleep will- at least for a few hours, calm this empty ache that's for so long been eating me like a cancer.
From time to time, I find myself suffused with a deep longing to feel closer to my Judaism.
Tonight, I dug out an old, pocket-sized sefer tehillim, put it into a blue, velvet pouch, and placed it in the army green satchel that's recently, for reasons of practicality, supplanted my handbag.
I searched through my dusty, disordered bookshelf for an old friend in A B Yehoshua, couldn't find it, and settled on a beaten up second (or third? ) hand copy of Amos Oz's "My Michael", purchased at Dani Books on Ibn Yisrael on a bored, rainy, winter afternoon in Jerusalem. It now sits beside me on the bed. I may or may not re-read it, but that's not the point; it's a friend.
I resolved to say the Shema before sleep, and sought out Shoah documentaries on YouTube, to put on after the Shlomo Artzi concert to which I'm currently listening.
I know the images and stories will only intensify the painful feelings of trauma I'm currently experiencing, along with the rest of klal am yisrael, which, right now, is exactly the point. This, too, is a deep part of my Judaism.
My Judaism, molded on both sides of the sea (to paraphrase Achinoam Nini), is Friday night candles and dinner with my family (when they were alive,) before going out with friends; it's Shlomo Artzi, Amos Oz, Kavveret and Chumos, Kasha varnishkes, Bamba, and mezuzot on every door whose klafei have never once been checked. It's the occasional bracha when I think of it, and my collection of magnei David that always make me feel powerful when I wear them.
It's the stories my parents and grandparents told me that live in me in softened, pink hues, with rough edges so sharp they still cut deep.
It's so much of the trauma I, and my parents, and their parents, and so on, "midor ledor" have had woven into every cell of our being. The trauma is important, you see. It is the ner tamid that burns forever and keeps us warm in this cold world.
It's the scab that never heals, that at times, like now, I pick, just to see the blood.
This world has consumed my resolve
Like a handful of the
Crumbs of chips
The only remainders
At the bottom
Of a Pringles can.
Can we go home now?
There's no good rides, and the food is terrible and
I'm out of tickets anyway.
I'd looked forward to this for so long,
But the funhouse mirrors are all cracked, and
The paint is peeling.
The ferris wheel is rusted and I don't trust it, and
Even the teacups are out of order.
How many times can we play that game?
The ping pong ball will
Never fit into the bottle.
I've had my fill of funnel cakes.
Can we leave now? This place is too loud.
I've a headache, and I want to rest.
In line at the grocery store
There was a couple in front of me
She pushed the cart while he
He scratched her back
Gently through her coat
And she gave in to fatigue
Or affection
Or both, and her head fell to the side that he was on
They shared conversation
That no one else could hear
How much, I thought
They looked like we once did.
I wear you like a scarf
In winter, you keep me warm
But in summer
You itch my neck
And I wish that I could take you off.
If these horrors break you open
as they do me
Let yourself be broken
Let yourself be open
Humanity is a river in which we live
Let it in
Let it fill the
Spaces between your organs
Let it fill your organs
Let it take you over until there is
No more you.
You are us.
We are you.
There is no difference.
No difference at all.
Today is Hamas' "Day of Rage"
Today, I have therapy downtown.
Today, I'm wearing my blingiest Magen David.
Today, I am afraid.
I'm afraid, but I won't be made
to hide.
And even if I could hide, why should I?
Why should my lot be any different from that of my
Brothers, sisters and siblings who cannot hide?
Because they are charedi
Or because they live in Re'im
Or a thousand other ways
in which we are separated from the world.
True, maybe it's guilt:
That I'm here in NY,
While so many of my loved ones are still in our homeland.
It probably is, but nevertheless.
I am Re'im.
I am Nova.
I am Kfar Aza.
I'm Tel Aviv.
I'm a Zionist.
I'm an Israeli.
I am a Jew.
הנני.
Our heart is broken.
We'd be soulless if it wasn't
And we are not.
Our heart is broken
Wide open
This is why you can hear it beat even across the world.
Let your heart break,
Especially if it's soft.
Don't waste your precious energy denying this injury
But remember always
Softness is malleable
Our broken heart will heal
Scar tissue will create
New shapes
New strengths
Tend to this broken heart
And remember it's not just yours
That we are a people of one heart
In however many bodies.
How often I've heard
Antisemites claim
That we Jews went like sheep
To our deaths in the Shoah
But this morning, there's something I
Can't help but wonder
How many of us actually did acquiesce to our own murders
How many of us saw how dismal the world had become
How many of us—
Through layers of generational trauma, felt
The old familiar hatred
And hostility that had risen once again
And sensed our hopelessness
In the deafening silence of supposed friends, who were
Too intellectual to
So much as name the injustice
Without "considering the complexities at hand"
I can't help but wonder
How many of us went to our deaths
But not like sheep after all
Rather like warriors
Knowing how our deaths
Would come to stain humanity
Apparently, such stains fade
In almost no time at all.
How can I scroll past your photo?
You, amongst the 1400 something other worlds that have been immolated
Consumed
As if you were some
Thin symbol in
Soy ink on rice paper
Thinner than the pixels that
Create this fake ghost of you now
How can I scroll past your face, when my
Black hole heart wants to contain you forever?
And maybe therein
There is really a white hole
Maybe
Rather than collapsing,
Into some terrible singularity,
My black hole heart can
Draw you in
Protect you
Until it can cough you out again
Safe
Bright
And whole
On the other side.
This picture haunts me.
There's great beauty in these forms and colours, but the windows are so dark; they look cold and eternal, as though I'm looking into a portal between the worlds of the living and the dead. I can't look away, but it terrifies me.
I'm a natural sceptic, but right now, I'm a heartbroken sceptic in search of something— ANYTHING to make me feel connected to my Carrie, and so when today, in the middle of my living room, this candy wrapper fell, seemingly from the ceiling, it felt like a sign. Carrie used to buy these for us every year, because she loved white chocolate, and I loved Reese's, especially the holiday editions. (Better chocolate to peanut butter ratio in my opinion.)
And so, for a moment or two, I'll push aside my scepticism, and enjoy what really may be no more than the serendipity of a messy, cluttered apartment in dire need of cleaning, and a recently repositioned fan.
Except...
That's not really how it happened, is it? No, but the truth is far less magical, and we all love a good story, so I won't tell you the truth, about how the thing that actually fluttered to the living room floor was a crumpled, twisted receipt from Duane Reade that had likely been sitting on the sideboard, and that the candy wrapper was introduced when it stuck to my bare foot as I walked over the detritus that's still thick on the floor on my love's side of the bed where I hardly ever go, because I'm afraid to disturb any more remnants of her presence in this apartment, but it's dark and cloudy outside, and I needed to turn on her lamp.
I won't tell you any of that, because it's sad. And we all like a good story. Something to cling to in an unstable world.
And so, we'll stick with the story that the special wrapper, with the ghost on it was conveniently positioned on some high shelf, perfect for my love to send fluttering to my feet, just to let me know she's still here.
Fallen leaves
Dessicated in the
Late Autumn's cold winds
Crumble to nothing
They crumble so easily.
I've been tempted to check on my ticket
To hold it in my hands
Take stock of my inventory
But a body in motion tends to stay in motion
Unless acted upon by an equal
And opposite force
Something I'm severely
Lacking at the moment
"She's got a ticket to ride
She's got a ticket to riii-hiii-hiiide
She's got a ticket to ride.."
But unfortunately
She still cares.
I envy the wild orchid
And wish I too
Might bloom for six to ten weeks
then lose
My head, and quiet- like a stone, lie
Dormant in my bed
Of cool, soft loam
To bloom again
and begin anew
When the days are agreeable
And the cold skies
blue.
An old piece I wrote many years ago.
.....
G
You were
snail paced walks round the
Botanical Gardens,
creeping cacti and
alien orchids–
unlikely as painted plastic
You were
Intimate coffees
on Broadway
& on 9th Street
Trepidation and excitement at the thought you might touch my arm
You were
a thoughtful gift
from Trader Joe's:
chocolate covered potato chips I'd once proclaimed should be covered by Obamacare
But you were also
A party-size, blue bag of
Cool Ranch Doritos
eaten numbly
by the handful,
Stuffing down hurt as I
Stuffed them down my throat,
in my car, parked on Park Avenue South
and
You were
my regret:
a failed test for my
fledgling boundaries
and a mistake from which
I'll do my best not to learn.
I'm suicidal
And so I write,
And so I edit, and
Edit again
Until my thoughts lose shape
Until my lines lose meaning
Until I'm so sick of my
Moribund thoughts
That bored
I roll over
And go to sleep.
Thick, warm
Like Mother, the voice
Says “It’s time. You're tired. You should rest now.
Rest.”
Half asleep,
And with aching hands,
I type
Against the glaring light of my phone's screen
These notions might lose some of their loft
But left alone
They might lift me from this bed
On compliant legs.
With the advent of mobile phones and social media, we’ve
learned to externalise so many of our memories;
Instagram and Facebook, and the omnipresence of cameras within our
phones have granted us an expansion of our very minds; these devices have
become, in and off themselves, sense organs, and archives.
Having grown up in the 80s, there are precious few pictures
of my teen years. My parents were far from fond of my aesthetic choices, and I
never had enough pocket money to invest in the taking of pictures, or
development of film.
My inner images of myself from that time are all that
survive, and they all have wavy edges, prone to the kindness of idealism, or
the cruelty of internalised judgements from others. There is one picture that does exist, one taken
with a phone some 15 years ago of a TV screen, whereon was playing a VHS
tape: I’d been filmed one day for the
news, because home Karaoke had just been invented: I was in the 163rd
St Mall, and a local news station was doing a light hearted segment on people’s
reactions to the device which would allow anyone to “feel like a star in their
own living room”. I sang “Singin’ in the Rain”, because that’s the song Alex
and his droogs sang in “Clockwork Orange”. Punk rock man.
Anyhow, the picture is of a 17 year old me: I’m smiling, and
looking down. There’s a microphone cupped in both my hands, and my curly mohawk
has fallen over my eyes. I look
particularly gentle, I think. Soft. Vulnerable. Contrary to the image I strove to project, of
an angry, toughened, punk rock psychopath who’d shoplift earrings from the
Woolworth’s, and stab them through my ear on a whim; I wanted desperately to be
seen as someone not to be messed with, because at the time, I was someone
everyone messed with. I was a veritable
punching bag for every bully at my school, including teachers and faculty who’d
never outgrown such tendencies.
Sometimes I wonder what it might be like if I were able to
travel back in time to those days, to observe myself in that context; perhaps
even more revealingly, to observe those who took delight in tormenting and
bullying me; I wonder what I might see in them. Their bullying was brutish,
never sophisticated. I wonder what I
might be able to perceive in their faces; what might their microexpressions
reveal? Was there really such hate? Was
there fear? Was there helplessness and angst desperate for an outlet, any
outlet?
Was there guilt?
I reach back with my mind, but those images are even fuzzier
than those of my own face. In fact, if pressed, I doubt I could even name a
single one of my tormentors: not the jocks who called me “faggot” as they beat
and kicked me while I lay in a fetal position on the floor, trying to protect
my face, not the vice principal who then brought me into his office, pulled
down my pants, bent me over his desk and paddled me for “fighting”.
I remember the small revolver revealed threateningly to me
one day out on the front steps by the metalhead kid who often threw raw eggs at
me, but I don’t recall his face or name. Like some perverse version of Proust’s
tea soaked madeleines however, the image
of any similar gun on the news brings that moment back to me in the kind of
clarity only one fearing for her survival might experience: his face, blotted out, but the gun, an image as clear as my mental
image of the phone on which I’m now typing this memoir.
.....
On the morning of my eighteenth birthday, my mom bade me to drop out. She and my dad
had been called into the office enough times to witness the way the students
behaved, and, more concerning for my mom, the way the faculty and staff spoke
to the students. She saw the inherent violence on it all.
.....
I found the picture I’d described in my Instagram, and it’s somewhat different: rather than
looking down, my face is slightly downturned, but my eyes are looking up, and
my smile looks almost... menacing?
This is the fallibility of memory. Perhaps in my previous description, I was
Describing how I might have seen myself at the time, were I
granted the time travel opportunity I described above.
Then again, maybe the shot I’d captured was a split second
after I’d been looking down, smiling sheepishly. It’s possible. I can envision the two expressions, and they
flow together organically.
.....
Sometimes, in the midst of that strange, dreamless sleep
between dreams, an image of some random object that was a fixture in my
parents’ house pops into focus, and my body jerks violently awake, short of
breath, heart pounding.
All gone.
The enormous “I’ll Drink To Anything” mug that held two
regular mugs worth of coffee, the green, oval cigar tin from the middle section
of the downstairs medicine cabinet, the enormous, wooden headboard in my
parents’ bedroom that made a specific sound I’ve never heard replicated each
time it banged against the wall whenever someone sat on the bed...
Gone.
All this familiar ephemera–
Elements of a world I once knew with my skin: mundane things
affixed in time, place, soul...
The world I find myself in now can only be characterised by
the absence of familiarity; I reach out in all directions, trying to snatch
“home” elements from the ether.
They cost so much, and none of them are the same.
.....
I burrow deeply into nostalgia, like a worm, grasping at
objects that lie along the way: that chrome, “snowcap” bottle-cap pin I wore
daily in the eighth grade, the two- tone blue Vans I wore until they had holes,
and my parents begged my therapist to convince me to throw them away, the khaki
safari fedora from Merry-Go-Round that I was so proud of...
And of all things, it’s now 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 now pervades my thoughts;
this specific, and unimportant thing, that witnessed the daily, evening family 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 office, hung silently behind my mother’s back on
those sleepless nights she’d play Freecell at my father’s computer while 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 manage to wrangle to his will..
Those curtains, like the details of the corners of the
produce section at the Winn Dixe across the street, that I used to visualise like
a meditation on hot, lonely nights when I couldn’t sleep seven thousand miles
away in Kfar Habad...
Artifacts are witnesses.
When all is threateningly unfamiliar, it seems to be things
that are specific and trivial, even mundane that offer a feeling of safe
familiarity. Maybe this is the lure of
nostalgia; we’ve already survived this past; the only thing the future
promises, is that at some point, we won’t.
.....
The house, and all that it contained is gone. I’ve been paid
off.
What a weird chapter.
I feel like a character torn from the pages of a book that’s been my
entire universe since the day I was written, and now...
Now that every copy has been thrown on the fire; I’m adrift
in empty space, bereft of plot, setting, history. A mirror reflecting nothing.
.....
The other day, a friend posted on Facebook, asking about
people’s first apartment; mine was in South Gate, Los Angeles.
It was 1988, and for 120.00/week, I got to sleep in a roach infested
one story row motel, next door to Samsam’s Liquor, where the bathroom window
wouldn’t close completely, and I had to sleep in socks, sweatpants and a hoodie
with the hood pulled tight around my head and a bandana tied over my face to
keep the roaches from crawling into my ears, mouth or nose. I lived on Night
Train from Samsam’s and quesadillas from the burrito truck and I thought life
was amazing, because I’d escaped the hell of suburban Unincorporated Dade
County, Florida.
I’ve lived in several crappy apartments.
There was the motel in Key West, where my friend Meredith fell through the
rotting, wooden floor one morning on her way back to bed from the
bathroom. It was another motel, and we
shared not only a single room, but a single bed as well, although I ended up
sleeping on the beach most nights whenever she had a trick.
There was the “closet” on Dor Dor veDorshav Street in
Jerusalem, that was about 2 sq metres, and then there was the place in East
Harlem, on the third floor of an old walk up,
where the stairs had a literal depression in the middle from a hundred
years of foot traffic; it was over a 24 hr car wash, and I had 6 roommates (2
of us per room). The Brasilian landlady
kept a fermented crab in a bottle on top of the fridge, and I later
learned, she’d routinely go through my things while I was at work.
This place, the one that Carrie and I shared for 18 years,
is the nicest place I’ve ever lived; it’s the first place that’s really felt
like “home”, albeit less so in my love’s absence.
And things are changing here. Last night, I broke a small
ceramic plate. It slid out of the
cabinet and bounced off the stone countertop.
Until it exploded on the floor, I’d maintained a vain hope it might
survive. It was one of two survivors of
a set that’s lost members over the years in various ways. The two had nested comfortably atop the pile
of pasta bowls on the lower shelf of the cabinet for years. Now there’s only
one.
.....
When, in 1987 Sinéad
O’Connor’s album “The Lion and The Cobra” came out, I was instantly obsessed.
She was everything I wanted to be: powerful, beautiful, vulnerable, so
unflinchingly herself.
I was an awkward, traumatised, bullied, 18 year old punk in my
father's black combat boots, and a grossly oversized, loud, polyester old man’s
suit I’d bought at “Red, White and Blue Thrift” on 6th. I was also
seen by most people as a boy, although even the gargantuan suit in which I hid
fit far better than that designation.
I was sensitive, suicidal, friendless, and the favourite
target of every bully in North Miami Beach.
I was also carless, and so, daily I’d take the 9 Downtown
bus to the 163rd St Mall, to break out of my suburban isolation, to
see people and be seen.
A favorite way to pass my travel time was to fantasise
conversations with Sinéad. I just knew
that if somewhere along the bus route she happened to board, being the
outlandish, punk rock beacon I was, she’d see me, with my shaved head and many
piercings, and surrounded by the conservative nightmare of 1980s Miami, we’d
become instant friends.
And so in my imagination, she’d get on at the stop after
mine, by the 7-11. At first, we’d talk shyly to one another: she’d tell me she
was in town visiting family. She’d ask
me if I had an extra cigarette, and what there was to do. I’d suggest we walk
down to “Open Books and Records”, or go Thrift Store hopping; there really
weren’t many options. She was 3 days
short of 2 years my senior, but it didn’t matter; we were of the same tribe,
and I loved her fiercely. I wanted her to become my older sister, my protector,
and I wanted to protect her. I imagined her standing fearlessly between me and
my bullies, and I imagined quiet moments of emotional intimacy. I think many
big loves of all kinds might be born this way.
.....
I’m tempted to check on my ticket
To hold it in my hands
Take stock of my inventory.
But a body in motion tends to stay in motion
Unless acted upon by an equal
And opposite force
Something I'm severely
Lacking at the moment.
“She’s got a ticket to ride
She’s got a ticket to riii-hiii-hiiide
She’s got a ticket to ride..”
But alas
She still cares.
Resistance takes up so much space, and all of my
energy. I’m constantly worried I’ll run
out, and of course, the inner dialogue is constant:
“Why are you bothering? What do you think could possibly
change?”
“I don’t know, but I’m afraid I’d end up leaving the party
right before it gets good. “
“But you’re tired. You’re so tired. And everything hurts.
And the bills are mounting, and the city is starting congestion pricing. You
won’t be able to afford to even leave your neighbourhood anymore, you’re going
to be more isolated than ever, and what will you do when your funds run out?”
“I don’t know.
I don’t know.”
I finish my coffee, and return to bed.
So the demon is once again on my shoulder
Telling me again and again
Of the weightless softness of nothingness
And of how, in fact,
No matter how wonderful these
Odd compensations
They are still
Compensations, unable ever to be more.
I'm so tired of hearing
"It will get better", when
Even when it does,
It never stays that way.
Right now,
My breath itself makes me anxious
I long to put my
Diaphragm to rest
No
Nothing new has happened
There is no fresh injury
This is just the way it is
This is how it has always been.
Pay attention.
To now. This moment.
I promise you
Whatever you're going through
Good, awful, or mundane
One day, if you're lucky enough to still exist
Nostalgia will strike
And you'll try to recapture
What you were wearing
What you were feeling
What the weather felt like
What slant of light,
How your father looked, sitting at his desk in his
Ben Gurion shirt and khaki pants that
No belt could ever hold up
Above his slender hips
How your mother's students sounded
On their toy- like violins, playing
Variation after variation
Of "Twinkle"
Which dog,
Or dogs were alive at that time
What you ate for dinner when you gathered around the
White formica table that night
After your mom's last students for the day had finally left
Once your father had been a
Woken from his
Afternoon nap
And since
We still can't Google
Our own intimate experiences of things
Pay attention
I promise you
There will come a day you will
Want to recall
This now.
Sundress n old docs
Too dark gas station sunglasses with the
Cracked black plastic frames
Cigarette ash flies back in
Open window wind
The past year fades with the FM reception
Push in the tape
Let's shoutsing a new song.
While you've been away in your
Cool dark grave,
Summer has returned to
Our Yorkville street:
The boisterous birds
Crowd the branches of green Gingko
The women walk past in
Sundresses, or shorts
Even the Brownies writing tickets
Have uncovered their arms.
I have unearthed my
Canvas camp chair,
Returned to my second floor perch on the catwalk
Unlike me, the
City barely notices your absence
One day, my own will be
Just the same.
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.
The day my dad died
I ate my breakfast quietly
No Podcast, nor music
There were no radishes for my tartine
Afterwards,
I showered
Shaved my legs and washed my hair
The day my dad died
There were so many calls to make
The rabbi wanted me to write something up for the funeral
I couldn't remember my parents' anniversary
The afternoon of the day my dad died
I sewed shut the broken zipper on the side of a skirt
Put new laces in
My black shoes
Got the mail
Wrote a grocery list
On the evening of the day my dad died
There would be no seven o'clock
"How was your day?"
Nor "Did you eat any dinner?"
And no "I love you"s
The day after my dad died
We buried him
I watched it all on zoom
Men respectfully covered his grave
From a mound of dry, grey soil
The Rabbi spoke of my dad's smile
Intoned prayers
Bade me tear my clothes
All the while
The dishwasher purposefully hummed from the other room.
An apple core oxidised on the table before me
And outside my window
A few white flakes fell from a
High, grey sky.
The old familiar birds nest of your thin bones
Bones that nursed your cancer—
Carefully, like eggs,
Until hatched, it consumed you
Liver and spleen,
Now burst you out from that
Chalky cage.
How can I pull the
Warm light of day
Back into the darkness
Of these atrophied cells, when
Packed under layers of
Cold, wet earth
I'm already becoming
Blind like stone?
There is a reason we
Compare grief
To a black hole :
It's so massive
Inescapable
It has a gravity
All its own.
"Strong" is a trap.
"Strong" is a lie.
"Strong" denies the cracks in the foundation.
Were I a house, I would be condemned,
Not told how the cracks don't show,
How the clumps of crumbling plaster are "normal" after what I've been through, or worse,
Don't really matter at all.
I am not strong,
Nor am I weak; I am
Hollowed out, decayed and infested with the blackest mould crawling up my walls.
I am imploding;
Sinking into unstable ground.
Demons have taken up residency inside my
Derelict walls.
I decay where I stand; that is,
When I'm able to stand at all.
Mostly I sit,
Still as old bricks,
And wait for the earth
To reclaim me.
Old igneous crumb the earth has coughed up
Adrift in black and airless space
Even the stars were a
Broken promise
Cold
White and
Beautiful corpses.
Last month, my beloved partner Carrie passed away while I held her hand after a lifetime of severe illnesses. I buried her two days later on what would have been our 18th anniversary.
Today, thirty three frought days after I lost my love, I turned 54, and so naturally, shortly after I finished my birthday mug of hot chocolate, I broke down and began quietly sobbing in Max Brenner.
It wasn't loud or particularly disruptive, but if someone happened to look at me, they'd see that my shoulders were subtly shaking, and while my long hair obscured my face, when the waitress asked if there would be anything else, my voice audibly cracked as I asked for my bill.
Just across the way at another table, two tourists sat and unabashedly stared while they whispered to one another. Rude!
Ours is a crowded city. I can't count the number of times I've been in a Duane Reade or Gristede's and some young woman in Uggs (always in Uggs,) was on her phone crying, or fighting with someone, and nobody nearby so much as batted an eye. Why? Because in this crowded city, we understand the need for space, for invisibility. We respect one another by not making one another self conscious, by not bothering one another. This isn't because we don't care; on the contrary, it's because we understand. It's because we share so much: space, culture, fate, needs...
When tourists come into our communal spaces and contravene our cultural standards it's intrusive. They are the proverbial "ugly Americans", regardless of from where they come.
So I beg of you non New Yorkers: come enjoy our beautiful city, but learn something about our customs and culture, and please don't treat us locals as spectacles. We're just living our lives, and sometimes, that means we are publicly messy.
Ignore us. (Except when we're trying to pass you on the sidewalk; then, for God's sake, please, get the hell out of our way. )
Have you seen these
Slight bones of mine?
Riddled and porous with disease
You may think of them as
Well buried treasure,
(I'm sure that even the worms wait with bated breath!)
I may be pieced together with
pins, screws
Even staples in places
But I'll tell you something about this broken body :
I have stolen the mantle of Atlas,
And granted Sisyphus leave from his labours
And you
You look at me as though the weight of your discomfort alone should knock me over.
At last, no rage
At dying light,
For restless futures, no more fight
The world has won:
I set it free
I've signed the forms
I am at peace.
And in the end, you
Embraced me like an old friend you hadn't seen since college
You'd touched my arm twice
It was awkward, but it felt good
For once, to touch another heart's blood
Heart's skin, and when
At 86th Street
We said farewell
I watched you descend into
The bloodstream of the city
Emptied, I wondered the
Aisles of CVS
Bought unnecessary mascara
And eyelash serum
And then sent you
My accurate shadow
To keep.
Floating over leaden feet out from hospital halls
An automaton. Your jeans, and bra
Crumpled into the bottom of a white, plastic bag
I felt like I carried your sad body in that bag,
I moved— not quite walking
Head down hung mouthed
Fallen faced in crowds
I needed the world to see that I was broken.
"There's something to be said for widow's wear" someone told me,
And so I wore your last breath like a black veil
Over everything I touched
And allowed the discomfort
Of waitresses and taxi drivers
To lie across my body like
Grey assuagement.
If only it were permissable
To beg you to fill me with yourself
Obliterate this barrenness
Eventhough, I've no ready-made future on which to sell you
I recognise the request is preposterous
Offensive even, but look
These are my hands
Aching Empty and
This is my mouth
Alike In want
My pockets as well are now empty—
I bring nothing from before
The stones with which I had
Filled them have all been
Repatriated
And I am here, ready to share
Their mean country
Won't you pluck me from this dust
Set me upon your cool mantle
Amongst your candles
Dried hydrangea
And special things?
At three-and-a-half, a surgeon's knife
Carved my future from my belly
That was the first I learned that even
My body is not mine.
At eight, alone, I staked my claim
When I opened my wrists like early birthday presents.
I
To hell with your false bravado
Your obligatory resilience, it bores me to death
Show me instead, your
Injuries, your
Soft open hand
Show me the stubbornness of your trust
And I will open to you like a tasty wound.
II
A broken bone, improperly healed
Must be broken again to reset correctly
I break myself open
One hundred times a day
I'll never heal correctly—
I make certain of it.
This is my demonstration
Against your bootstrap imperative
I hoisted my sign the first time at thirteen, lying half
conscious beneath the
Head cheerleader's mother's wheel
They said I might lose the foot, but
Instead, I gained a gentle new thing
Softness, it turns out, can be stubborn too.
III
Each time I think of your last days in that horrible bed
I'm haunted by your
Swollen blue hands
Toward the end, they'd tied them down so that you couldn't
extubate yourself.
The finality came, your stone hand in mine, I watched your chest heave
Artificially
Long after the screen told me that your heart had stopped.
17.01.2023
We who subsist, one foot in the ground are
Powerful growers; our
Branches might even blot out your sun,
Steal its harsh light to feed our own
Leaves. Forgive me, please, for this brief narcissism
Will you now hate me for my admission?
Suicide is a drug, and I
Am addicted
Each dose fixed slightly less carefully than the last
I watch my own ritual, over
And over
One day I'll drift off into the sweet sleep of overdose
I imagine the elements of my life as detritus—
the granny cart that was Carrie's "from the Queens days", with one wheel now held on by a corrupted bobbypin
My brass flask
(Will it be discovered empty, containing only the vague scent of brandy?)
Will the unopened bottle of Chanel N°5 in the back of the fridge
Find a new neck to perfume?
Will the thousands of books that crowd my apartment find their own lonely tomb, or
Will they live again?
I miss smoking.
Well, why shouldn't I? What's the use in abstinence now? This crass charade that
If we behave virtuously, we can live forever? No thank you.
I imagine myself as a memory
Or a cautionary tale—
"Poets almost never end up happily, become a plumber, instead!"
Suicide is a drug, and I am addicted
This taste of sweet freedom the tongue can never forget.
What better thing could there be than to be
That soft spot where you might land
When all the worlds—
both inside and out
have assailed you with calloused hands?
It's day again.
Awakeness again.
This brash returning to me
I'm never ready.
My angry, growling neighbour is shouting and slamming doors again
The wall between our apartments shakes
A raucous chorus of sostenuto horns break through my thin windows again—
Other exasperated people I'd never ordinarily have to know are stuck in traffic on some impassable block
And now I know them
I know them too well
It's intimate
My tired body has been penetrated by someone else's impatience again
But now, the buzzer sounds–
FedEx is here again
My phone rings,
It's Citibank again
There's no time for a gentle awakening
No time to meet the day slowly, on softened feet
The things that others
Seem to accept as a precondition of the world
Assail me
Day is an impatient dog with unkempt claws
Scratching up my tender legs.
Apparently, I missed my morning pills (which include my prozac)
Everyday this week until today.
Last night, I was feeling so close to giving in, that
When I came home from my doctor's appointment, I downed half a bottle of brandy the moment I'd dropped my purse on the sideboard
Harm reduction
My doctor is doubling my dose
I suppose it would help more if I remember to take it
Yesterday was also my final session with a grief counselor
I was allotted eight
Eight forty-five minute sessions
Spread out over nine weeks
For the loss of my love
Of eighteen years
Yesterday was hard
I almost went looking for my cache
Today, so far is slightly easier; I don't trust it.
Sometimes the killer is inside the house
When mine gets bored, he stands over me with ultimatums:
Poetry or pills?
Be wary, I guess, if ever I go silent.
Never have I swum in gentle creeks
Only torrents wild, arroyos, shallow and quick to anger have bathed me
I drowned a hundred times before I was three
That was the summer of my surgery
Recovering, my mother placed a donut for me on her dresser—
Pink frosting with sprinkles on a blue and white plate
If I wanted it, I'd have to get up from their expansive green bed and walk
Seven feet
Cross the ochre, shag carpet
Heavy guts tumbling out from fresh, red and yellow sutures.
Some mornings
Like this morning
As slowly I rise, a phoenix from sleep
I forget that I'm alone in my bed, I dream
A partner who's impatiently awaiting her coffee
A dog who needs me to let him out to pee
A mother I have to call
Even a mythical kitten enthralled
Hunting invisible bugs on the wall
When finally, I catch up to reality
It's a shock; I go through
All my recent losses
And the grief begins anew.
11.01.2023 I
Suspiciously, slightly less suicidal this morning
Though I've learned to mistrust this absence of drive
That old and comforting, familiar friend; I've known her since I was eight: the first time
I opened my wrists on that rust pitted blade broken
Off from a red, plastic pencil sharpener.
She's kept me company through my darkest epochs, some lasting days or weeks, or years. Even decades.
She's only ever an aching palm away
Close as my own fingerprints.
Maybe she's just gone out for groceries.
Maybe she's off on holiday. She rarely says when she's leaving or
For how long she'll be away
However, kind friend that she is, she knows just how to anticipate my need for her; something
Happens and Bang! she's right beside me once again.
How often I want to ask you
Could you love me
Could you do
What I need you to do?
Could you stand beside me while I dance this daily danse macabre
Could you abide me even as I rob
From you your afternoon light?
The hydrangea with which I've bedecked my mantle
Arrived already dead
Not wilted but crisp and warm brown in their winter sleep
A bit like me
This "elegant skeleton" who
Stands here before you, still
Possessed of beauty in my place between the worlds, asking
Could you love me? Could you
Love me loving you? Could you
Tend to my grave after I've passed through?
Could you adore this thing that insists to cling
To sides of cliffs
Stubborn goat
Who- all too aware the narrow ground is
Even now crumbling beneath her cloven hooves?
Who refuses her place in the Ridiculous parade for
Those vainglorious warriors who maintain
Some futile hope against entropy—
Could you love me?
Could you accept me loving you?
Could you even
Dance with me, or simply bang the
Timpani while I do what I do?
Diminished by your loss,
Only slightly there
I hang on by a gold locket of your silver hair
Or a whiff of mysteriously perfumed air–
Egyptian musk, that
Haunts the small hall
Outside our room—
Is that you? Are you there?
Why won't you come in, wrap around me again?
I don't understand,
Are you there? Are you aware? Or
Are you no spectre at all? Only air?
If I go on to find you will I too dissapear:
A collection of recollections
A cautionary tale? An occasional whiff of Chanel N°5
Which no one but you would attach meaning to?
"Old Lady Perfume" you called it
And you were right
I am older than the dirt that covers your white
Coffin, on whose lid I left my
Red lip mark
One last joke whose punchline will hang over you forever.
You hated to kiss me when I was wearing lipstick
I loved to torture you
That same way.
"Blech! Blech!" You'd swipe at your lips by back of hand.
This image, more than any other I fold into a small square
And tuck it neatly inside my brassiere.
The hydrangea corpses hang on in my winter garden
Still beautiful in death
Elegant skeletons
We have something in common I suppose
I still receive compliments although I too am dead.
Still,
Nobody picks my brown blooms for their mantle.
My life stretches out behind me
Like a rat's tail; I cannot shake it.
Before me, an interminably high and broad
Wall: solid and grey as slate.
No way over or around it,
Only thing is to join with it:
Become carbon again!
Compost compressed
Time immemorial
What a wonderful word:
Im. Em. Orial.
Time will not remember me,
Will not recall my soft thoughts or deeds— they'll dissolve
Along with my flesh; my
Cheeks and breasts,
Belly and thighs, a
Delicious repast for the
Microbes and mites
Calcium will be the final discernable element— the only fossil or record of me.
How wonderful to become
That wall before me.
The vile of green sticks, and the
Bottle of flat, white
Pills scare me. Too easily swallowed with a glass of brandy
Impossible to forget, and far too handy.
They wait me out, just out of sight
I count them out on Friday nights
Twenty-six green, and
thirty-eight white.
I've always been a little in
Love with death;
She's gently teased from my first glimpse of light
"Come hither to safety you tired, wary babe,
Come rest your head upon my breast."
She is mother, father, and lover as well–
Even as she claims each for her own.
Oh death, how your great, broad
Curling arms call me
To lay myself down by the roots of trees;
How your promise of safe, and dreamless sleep warms me
Even as I in your cutting wake freeze.
My eyes are so much worse than they were even nine months ago;
the last time I had a vision exam.
I've had surgery since then, for a detaching retina.
It's made little difference. I
Still see the strange, bright white flashes of light
I still can't read the cable guide
In fact,
I'm having so much trouble reading much of anything.
I went today into Cohen Optical to
Ask about a new vision exam
A new pair of glasses, explain how the old ones are
Worse than nothing at all.
"You'll have to wait until April" she tells me, either that or
Pay out of pocket.
Five hundred dollars, minimum it turns out.
I'll wait.
Just three more months.
After all, I barely drive anymore
And who needs to read, anyway?
Maurice has a hernia.
He lifts te many layers of his sweatshirts to show me.
"That looks painful" I grimace
"It don't hurt. If it don't go away in Febyooary, they gonna take care of it in March."
We talk about the dangers of surgical mesh ; I decide not to tell him how it slowly murdered my mother over 24 years.
He asks me if I'm married. I decide not to tell him I'm a widow.
As I'm getting up from the bus bench to leave, he asks me for a hug. There are giant, gloppy tears falling from his right eye.
I hug him twice per his request.
He asks if he can squeeze my ass.
He asks me if I'll be his friend.
But he wants more from me than I have to give
Even to myself.
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