Sometimes I sit, 18 and overheated
in the front room of the men's heritage house, where I
play someone else's guitar and twist my hair in my
palms like
yellow bundles of uncooked pasta I  might
break or
bend or
eat out of restlessness.
Tonight my sandal worked idly, pressing
its shadow into my leg when your electric
warm gaze flipped on
my lightswitch
and clicked. Out of my beige office boredom
came you - toothy.
But in high school you hit on my
best mate's sister, so, perched next to me on the
only plastic chair at the loudest bar in town, I crouched
down in a puddle of beer onto
raised toes and mentioned your name and he,
being British and emotionally constipated, muttered
something about you between football shrieks and cigarette drags,
sipped his Guiness and saw.

My first winter without you
I spent New Years with my hands in an ancient wall
and the stone set my eyes on fire
each a candle, one burning for shabbat,
one burning for you like a yartzeit that wouldn’t dwindle
mourning your hands, my face buried in your chest.
You are
so tall.
You were drinking somewhere
and you didn’t want my prayers.
My first winter without you
I filled notebooks and found new arms
I learned what it is
to be afraid of dying young
I learned what it is
to feel home
and you
are not it.
My first spring without you
I floated on the Dead Sea at dawn
and wiped the oil off the wounds in my knees
I prayed with my eyes closed in the marketplace and
filled my fists with the fruits of the season.
I ate books for breakfast.
I spent nights in dim hidden rooms playing bongos until my palms shook
My first spring without you,
I wrote my first song.
I waltzed in the middle of a street party
where the DJ blasted some pounding techno anthem of a budding culture and
I, behind a feathered mask,
kept slow measured time and watched the bloom of my own.
My first summer without you
I had a beer poured over my head by a boy whose
wide shoulders and broad-mouthed accent sent me
leaping back in gaping toothy laughter. I shook
my hair out and chased him into the the Armenian quarter,
but he didn’t run. Daytime
we all baked in our own salt,
marinated in sweet new friendships and nostalgia for
some California coastline - for nights in your living room
with its tin walls and landscapes taped up.
If I looked through your couch cushions now
I might find, I’d think, some bobby pin or blonde hair.
On your wrist a hairband whose
owner you’d forgotten.
My first summer without you
I was spit on by a stranger for the first time, and a
man chased after the car, holding his kippah on his head,
his anguished yelp filling with dust and car exhaust while my
things sat in boxes in America, not belonging to me anymore,
or me not belonging
to them.
My first fall without you
it rained so softly the children went outside and opened their mouths
This week a man told me that redemption
is remembering who you were before you lost yourself.
I remember who I was before you,
something gentle, something the
very lightest shade of grey.
You would not recognize me if you saw me now,
calm in the eyes.
Three years together, one year apart,
and not a single poem for you,
until now.
Happy birthday.

How do you explain

to your children that the

horrors of the world are real?

How will I tell my son, We

found a place you can call home but

your bus might not make it to school.

Do not look too Jewish in this part of town

Do not play in the train station

Do not get used

to the weight

of a machine gun.

Or look my

daughter in the eye and say, someday

you might say “no” and someone stronger than you might

not listen

You will not tell me

Know that this happens a lot

Know that your wrists pinned against a

backboard will

echo in the way you move your hands

for as long as you let it

But

human hands aren’t as heavy as metal shackles

And I’m so sorry

but I won’t be able to

take the weight for you

You’ll wake up in the morning

That I can promise you

You’ll wake up

and your lungs will fill with air

whether you tell them to or not.

One day

I will hold someone

small, with my face

and they’ll cry and I’ll say,

*I know.

I know you’re tied with little yarn strings to the last life

I know it hurts to be here and

(honestly)

you’re never going back

But

the older you get the less you’ll remember

what it was like

before you had a body

when you were made of ash and infinite light

You’ll convince yourself you live here and

that your hands are you,

But remember that once you were boundless

Inside my body, without yours.

There is a concept in religious circles here

(and other shapes;

rectangles, rhombuses,

rorschach blots freckled with faith)

that the way to get closest to a person

is to not touch them.

So

they laid in your car side by side,

her elbow holding her head up like

an exhibit on falling, on disbelief

and you puffed up your unshaven cheeks

and blew in her face.

It blew her eyelashes back and they

bowed their blonde-headed arms at you,

They heard you tell her a

bedtime story with your eyes closed

and they laid down to sleep too, lacquered down with

air conditioning fluid brushed wet through the desert nighttime air.

At dawn,

you promised you wouldn't touch her
as you

lit a cigarette and held it to her mouth,

her lips an inch from your knuckles

and she breathed you in and blew

the smoke out the car window where it

hung suspended like a ghost.

An empath and a mirror walk into a bar

and the empath says

I see myself in you.


Let me buy you too much wine and

kiss your collarbones and

twiddle my fingers on your skull.


and the mirror says,

Yehoshua (what a beautiful name)

Yehoshua, the prophet. I am so tired

of doing the right thing

My knees are sore I

want

my field of poppies.


So the Prophet says You can rest in my field

if you let me know you, the parts you keep

tied to your hips like bells, or like weights

that clinking prisoner's hymn strapped to your chest.

Know that I know you, even

the parts you left unsaid (Especially those.)

He says  

I want to have

my parents' strength.

I want a stranger to ***** in my bed.

I want to crawl into your head and hurt you with

your reflection. Open up your mouth and

I can put the words in myself, but I can't promise my

tongue won't taste like 20 years of forged metal

(And I

can't promise every pretty girl in town doesn't have

my metallic tinge behind her teeth.)


(So she says)

Why can't you stay still?

(and the Prophet says)

I'm always running late

(and she says)

*I've stopped running

"listen
beloved i dreamed
i thought you would have deceived
me and became a star in the kingdom
of heaven" - ee cummings


listen
love, I am
looking for things to promise you.
(i promise) I have noticed the lines next to your eyes
I promise I am a foreign country
i'm not trying to be
I promise sometimes I look in the mirror and I see a child
and I am right.
Build me a castle
made of cigarette butts and litchi fruit
and (i will) wear my crown of white hot ash
and i will burn my Hebrew name into your palms like
some catholic wednesday
like some stolen bicycle
like your sidelit kindness in the cold.
(go home)
and i will write you a song
sweet enough to
wash the taste
out of your mouth.

Somewhere between
space
(and)
Gd
there's a star
made out of all the seconds you
cleared on the microwave
just before it was done because
you didn't want
to hear
it beep.
That is where time
goes when it's mad
at its parents, to play
old records and smoke
cheap cigarettes and
complain that its
best friend is dead.
My best friend/is dead/And although she would never sleep in the bed with me/And although she doesn't fit in the dollhouse anymore/I  dreamed she was gone the day before it happened/and dreamed she took a part of my life with her. That
is where
your thoughts go
the first time
you
don't miss someone as much as you did yesterday. I am not proud/that I am waiting/for tomorrow/you are that star/and I will sit on you and dangle my feet in the water/Meet me/in the Mediterranean/so I can kiss your toes goodbye.

Somewhere between
you
(and)
me
(and)
washing my hands in the morning,
I learned
how to lose things.