learn to love yourself
incase when the time comes
that no one's gonna love you
right and sincerely
or when they left you
alone
you have yourself

that's not being selfish

it's self care that comes from love

There is a place high
Up, up above
In the vast blue sky
Yet deep, deep within
The cavern of my being

Silence, light and smiles
Dance together
Nothing happens
Just Is

In giving
Is expansiveness
Truth within

In fear
Is contraction
The mind world
Of desire
Control
And illusion

Let all fade
In the blue ocean
Of silent love

learn to love yourself
incase when the time comes
that no one's gonna love you
right and sincerely
or when they left you
alone
you have yourself

that's not being selfish

it's self care that comes from love

he is my spring
and i’m his flower
a bud that blooms at his voice
and withers in his absence
my spring came with rain and
gently washed away my woes.
he is my spring
but what will happen to my bud
when it becomes
summer?

Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel
a Holocaust poem by Chaya Feldman
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We washed our bodies
and cleansed ourselves;
we purified our souls
and became clean.

Death does not terrify us;
we are ready to confront him.

While alive we served God
and now we can best serve our people
by refusing to be taken prisoner.

We have made a covenant of the heart,
all ninety-three of us;
together we lived and learned,
and now together we choose to depart.

The hour is upon us
as I write these words;
there is barely enough time to transcribe this prayer ...

Brethren, wherever you may be,
honor the Torah we lived by
and the Psalms we loved.

Read them for us, as well as for yourselves,
and someday when the Beast
has devoured his last prey,
we hope someone will say Kaddish for us:
we ninety-three daughters of Israel.

Amen

In 1943 Meir Shenkolevsky, the secretary of the world Bais Yaakov movement and a member of the Central Committee of Agudas Israel in New York, received a letter from Chaya Feldman: "I don't know when you will get this letter and if you still will remember me. When this letter arrives, I will no longer be alive. In a few hours, everything will be past. We are here in four rooms, 93 girls ages 14 to 22, all of us Bais Yaakov teachers. On July 27, Gestapo agents came, took us out of our apartment and threw us into a dark room. We only have water to drink. The younger girls are very frightened, but I comfort them that in a short while, we will be together with our mother Sara [Sara Shnirer, the founder of the Bais Yaakov Seminary]. Yesterday they took us out, washed us and took all our clothes. They left us only shirts and said that today, German soldiers will come to visit us. We all swore to ourselves that we will die together. The Germans don't know that the bath they gave us was the immersion before our deaths: we all prepared poison. When the soldiers come, we will drink the poison. We are all saying Viduy throughout the day. We are not afraid of anything. We only have one request from you: Say Kaddish for 93 bnos Yisroel! Soon we will be with our mother Sara. Signed, Chaya Feldman from Cracow." Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Chaya Feldman, daughters, Israel, washed, cleansed, pure, purified, immaculate, 93, ninety-three, death, God, prayer, heart, covenant, Torah, Psalms, Kaddish

my cheek fits into the bank of your chest
bare skin, intertwined
warmth rapidly gathering
our bodies glistening with perspiration
even in the absence of intimacy, we are intimate
steady heartbeats, out of sync
but still a lovely sound
aphrodite rose from the foam of the sea
to witness what this might become