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.

Do you know what infinity feels like?

It feels
Like rain rushing through your veins.
Like fire in your fingertips.
Like the scent of opportunity.
Like an earthquake is wrestling every brick of apprehensivity out of your bones.
Like a scream is stretching its arms out to reach for life outside of your body.

So you have to respond.

You have to
Drive at 80 mph with your best friend or lover when it’s too late at night to feel responsible.
Roll down the windows.
Turn up your stereo as loud as it goes.
Close your eyes and shut them tight.
Stretch your arms out the windows.
Tilt your head back.
Sit still.
And let it trample you like a stampede.

As you sit still, you must take it all in.

Embrace living in that perfect moment.
Embrace being who you are.
Embrace knowing that person in the driver’s or passenger’s seat.
Embrace love.
Embrace music.
Embrace the night.
Embrace being alive.

And let go.

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.

The day all of Israel fell asleep,

bald men in the shuk

lowered their heads onto eggs and squash

and snored out spice and

the tourists

dropped their cameras and lined the streets like

new roads made of

backpack to cover old stone

and

little children watching littler children

sharp in their shabbos dresses

laid in the mud and dug their white-tighted knees into the dirt and sighed

and I

sitting in my room

smoking tea and

standing on my head

forgot

about my broken foot

forgot

the time I turned my

stomach toward yours squinted my

eyes and pretended we were dancing

didn’t ask myself

How many seas I’d sail before

I could sleep in the sand

and I curled up to my

blanket with somebody else’s blood on it

and yawned.

Today all of Jerusalem broke silent,

the buses stopped and passengers froze

sirens singing then stopping one by one like electric geese shot down,

but no one was sleeping

only grieving

the fallen soldiers of a country young as me, old as dirt.