Last night
I spent the whole night lost in my imagination
Painting beautiful images of what my life could look at your side
The warmth of your lips grazing mine
Your strikingly small green eyes
A vulnerable love guarded by true confidence
Your kindness, your femininity

I spent the whole night dreaming
That you'd always be by my side on the rooftop at midnight
Caressing my back in that gentle way
Telling me go slowly and relax a little
Like time was only an illusion that we could all surpass  
With a little bit of love

I spent the whole night entrenched in a childlike haven
Where everything was wondrous
And all was infused with magic
****** into a space where my imagination ran wild  
Where anything was possible if I imagined it be
And where nothing needed to make sense

I spent the whole night loving
I saw the way you noticed my insecurities and weren't afraid to call me out on them
But you treated me differently, lovingly, it seems hard to explain
You were friends with people with big personalities
But I knew deep down that you were different
I knew you had feelings that ran real deep
You told me you had love to give and I knew that

I spent the whole night feeling
Your kiss warmer than anything I've ever felt before
And your touch gentler that the drip drop of a rain shower
You were a girl I knew I was in love with but I didn’t know how I could be
When the world constantly told me I shouldn't dare be

I spent the whole night wishing
I could share these dreams with the rest of them
and walk away holding your hand
Whisk you to the moon whilst kissing your soft neck
But you're a girl they all told me
Feminine, a female
And that couldn't be
So I walked right out of my dream like state
And never looked back

You told me I was weak to fall last night
To this unholy world outside where women walk around with their ******* out
Whilst ruining the universe
You said I was weak
What the ****

If only you knew
How hard it was to leave the "all questions answered" sanctuary
And start rethinking my choices, one at a time
To look outside the bubble wrap
Re-illustrate the soul, paint over my tainted image of god
Allow my vision to evolve a little

If only you knew what it was like to meet people that were different then me
Recognize my ingrained biases
And then relearn loving-kindness for all of humanity this time around
Think about the global impact
Cycles of life
Understand social justice and sensitivity for what it really was

But you told me I was weak for wearing shorter skirts
In the name of poor kids in Africa
Like my legs were a disgrace to the universe
More harm then good
Because longer skirts can cure poverty and inequality and pain
And I was just like the women on the magazines
You always told my brother never to look at

If only you knew how ******* strong I was
To talk to my body; tell it, it wasn’t violating anything really
To embrace it freely
Allow it to be what it was
For what it is
But still, you told me I was weak
How dare you?

If only you knew
How painful it was
To touch myself the first time
And uncover my sleeves in one hundred degree weather
If only you knew how many demons reprimanded me when I ate tater tots at 7/11
******* tater tots, for the first time
If only you knew how much it killed me to travel to India and see what I saw
And realize I needed to do something no one ever told me to do
For the first time ever
If you only ******* knew

You said I was disappointing god
And that I wont know how to face him after I die
That I'll have nothing to say for my weakness
Because he gave me so much potential to be an influential girl
While raising a religious family
And then you told me you loved me
And that you'll always love me
You wanted to hold my hand  
**** that

If only you knew the demons I fight every day
If only you knew the shame I bask in
And yet still pull through again and again
If only you knew how isolated I feel
When instead of being able to recite Rumi
I have words of the Mishnah memorized in my conscious
Reminding me that women are chatterboxes and ****** distractions

If only you knew how many tears I've cried
How many social gatherings I've missed
How many childhood mantras I've battled head on over and over
Because they were wrong and unjust and just wrong again
If only you knew the continuous battles
The pain and the shame
**** that

But you told me I should've just stuck with it
Been a religious girl whilst pursuing my passions
Embrace my yiddishkeit
Marry someone, anyone really and birth a couple of kids
You said that maybe instead of taking all this time to fight against religion
I should fight for it and then I'll be really strong
Did I see how I was impacting my little sisters anyways?
How dare you?

But I'm weak, right
Ya obviously I am
Of course
If you only knew tatty
If only you ******* knew

When you were born
I didn't know that you would crawl into my bed at 11 years old
asking me why it was that some people were just so mean
I guess I thought you'd live a little longer in your womb-like dream

When you were 5
Mom asked me to put u to sleep because you wouldn't listen to anyone else
And so we would sit on our magic carpet which was maybe a yoga mat or perhaps an old newspaper
And dream of  places we could go to in our heads
Places we would go to together
They said I spoiled you
I just didn’t want you to grow up like anyone else
I guess I didn’t want you to grow up at all

At 6, I told you, you had superpowers
Just like the fantastical creatures you read about in books you had your own magical powers too
You believed me then, a part of you still does
You used to whisper our codename in my ear once in a while
Superpowers you'd say and smile; it was our secret
A Secret no one else knew but you and I

At 6 and a half Tally died
You didn't sleep for a few days
You cried more that week then when Grandpa died
I didn’t know until then that someone could be so deeply connected to a turtle
In the way that you were
But I learnt that you'll always be able to speak to animals
More than any of us ever could

When you were 7, you wrote little notes to your teachers in the margins of your homework
They were painfully sweet and childlike in their innocence
Probably ended up in the trash
Once someone made a comment about it
They said you weren't supposed to do that and that was you wrote was babyish
You shrank inward a little... I know it hurt
I'm not sure you wrote that much after

Then at 7 and a half, you understood how school kills every Childs soul  
But still, Mom made you go
You were petrified of becoming a boring adult
So I sat you down and taught you to brush off what your teachers said
To just doodle in the corners of your notebook and dream
I bought you an ideas book, told you to create worlds
Your teachers called worried
They said you were spacing out a lot
But I smiled inside when I heard

At 8, I used to sneak into your room past bedtime
Mom hated that I did that
She said I wasn't your parent
But you never liked to go to bed
And so we cuddled late at night, in the quiet
Although I never could put my arm around you, only by your side
It was just one of your things
Like the way my kisses were just too slobbery
So we started doing butterfly ones

When you turned 9, I left home
But mom would still call me in the mornings when you were in bed
screaming and refusing to go to school
She would ask me to try and calm you down
7:45 AM...mom screaming and everyone flustered
They never knew our secret
We didn't talk for long but I reminded you of your superpowers
And you usually got up

In the next year I was away, we invented imagination hugs
In fields of tulips and over the clouds
Newly discovered planets and underwater worlds
So many places we went to in our minds together
You always closed your eyes and you might not have believed me
but I also did every time
When we got to the part when I hugged you, I felt your love envelope me
My little one, my innocent

I came home when you were 10, heard you made friends
With girls you later told me you didn't really like
You could never be friends with girls your age because they did mean things
Like waste food and step on ants
And the adults you didn’t like either
Because they always made fun of your dreams
So you started daydreaming all the time
Like in the car and in your third grade history class
You daydreamed when there was business talk at the dinner table
You hated it
I know you never said it out loud
But once you whispered in my ear that you wished they didn't talk so much about that stuff
You said adults were boring
And that adults gave up on their dreams
You were right

You got real big and so I took you shopping for your first bra
But I made sure to tell you that even though you were growing ******* you didn’t have to be an adult quite yet
Suddenly, you had bigger thoughts and wondered a lot
About why people threw out their old carboard boxes
Instead of turning them into houses for the crickets or models for people's dreams
About what we got out of light pollution that made it worth erasing the stars
You wondered why people didn’t just sew their own clothes
And asked if it was possible for you to go to one of those other schools you found online
Instead of sitting in a stiff row of desks every day
As the world let you down, you grow more and more quiet
your eyes opened, your throat closed and your words dried up

Then you were 11, almost a women, and the world had even more rules
And so you locked your bedroom door
I hoped you still wondered, still had dreams
But we only spoke about real things once in a while
You were a little girl soul with big girl ideas and big girl problems
You watched adults cry and scream about things that didn’t matter
And so you stopped crying about things that did
You slept with your cousin when she was too scared to sleep alone
And woke up to comfort your big sister
You even gave me with hugs when I needed them

That same year, you made a friend you actually liked, she was my friend
You loved her because she saw you
And would talk to you about your dreams
And when I didn't have the time to cherish your innocence. She did
On the night she was in the hospital and I thought she died
You came and comforted me. You were the only one I let in my room
No one knew really how connected you and her were
You said nothing, but looked at me with these beautiful sad eyes
I'm not sure you really knew much
But we always spoke in shmush language anyways

At 11 and a half, you cried to me about the girls in your class
How they once called a black man awful names and how you ran out to the bathroom and cried
I still saw a soft little girl
But now you read biographies of black people in front of their faces, to teach them loving kindness
You still get mad at adults for being boring and always thinking about money
And still don’t get what money really is anyway
You still ask me why countries go to war and why some people **** other people
Why grown ups scream and argue and choose to live sad
Now you watch videos of Greta Thumberg and learn about climate change
And yet, you still get mad at people for not recycling

Your eyes are still sparkling
You hold the caterpillars in hand
And build worlds with old tree stumps
Your heart is on fire
But you're growing more silent with time
More soft and delicate about your words
You never shout what's on your mind anymore
I guess you've learnt that people don't hear your dreams
Your eleven now, though
My beautiful soul of a sister
Your eleven now almost 12
And then 13…
And 14…
And 15…
My little girl- I'll always believe in your dreams
Please, though, grow a little stronger, and get a little louder
Your innocence is your beauty, your pulsing heart
But this broken world doesn’t need your quiet
It needs your voice

When the years come round and round
And time seems to evaporate
The winter around me fuzzes up a little
And I get cozy with myself
On a warm feathered pillow
And slip more and more into solitude
Once a break from reality, now a surreal daydream
A shelter from the rain that never stops pouring down
Pink sheets and a hot tea, comfortable
Good vibes only
A warm space heater in the winter cold
Slipping into solitude
Protects me from the thunderstorms  
And so I grow my roots in deeper
And retreat further and further from the noise
Walking backwards into solitude
Here, what matters only is the surrounding sounds
Of my breathe, my Heartbeat, my mind
My fingers tap tapping away on my keyboard
The occasional music singing to me in my earbuds
As I slip into solitude
My thoughts become a theater drama
The only drama that really matters
Amongst the chatter and the gossip
Which I've shut out long ago
Slipping into solitude
I build myself a bed and a kitchen down there
Play Hide and Seek from the world
But mostly just hide, too deep to seek
As I slip into solitude
Because I am I and you are you
And the further down I slippidy slip
The less fuzzy the boundaries become
You are you, walking the city streets
and I am I
A heartbeat, a breathe, frozen in time
Falling asleep and waking up again
In my fuzzy PJs
Warm tea, feather pillow, shelf of journals
I am I
Alone, undiscovered, hidden
Slipping my way into solitude

When I realized that love is about moving things around to create space in my heart
For someone else to reside in
De-cluttering
Unleashing 
Clearing out the closets
When I realized that love
Is not just about making room in the back laundry room or on the ragged love seat in the garage
That its not about rearranging my bookshelf to make room for a literary recommendation
or about leaving an empty page on a sketchpad for a portrait
When I realized that love isn't
Handpicking moments of vulnerability with the same intricacy I use to pick tomatoes at the vegetable store
Making space
But not making room
Inviting one into my day
But not into my heart
Hearing, caring, and then disappearing
Fearing the consequences of my oversharing

When I realized that love is about inviting someone all the way in
Breaking the walls and the cages, false images and plastic impressions
Into the silence and the speechlessness
Past the uncertainty and doubt
Past more doubt
And more uncertainty

When I realized that love is about making space at the dinner table after a long day
where the mind races with worry and  arguments sprout
That its about making space in the mess, the chaos, the clouds of constant confusion
And the thunderstorms
Space in the bed when the nightmares begin and when I begin question over and over again
Space where the blood starts pumping
Where my life begins
And ends
At the same time

When I realized that love is about raw honesty
Exposure
Trust
Allowing someone else to strum my strings
Even the weakest ones
The strings that haven't been tuned in years
Letting someone make music of my weaknesses and tunes of my uncertainties
And certainties
If I ever had any

When I realized that this is what love is really about
I shrunk and disappeared into the backroom corner
Head in lap, eyes closed, containing all the feelings

Im sorry
I guess I panicked, Im not sure I made the space yet
For love
and I fear, I'm too small, too scared
To try

I'm sorry God,
Im sorry for the dents weve made in your earth
For the hundreds of times weve chiseled our names into your oak trees and indented our fingertips into your mountainsides
Sorry for the vernal grass we laid bricks upon and covered up with our cemented tar streets
For the skyscrapers we built to hinder the clouds; the telephone wires that hide the goodness endowed
Forgive us, for the hundreds of concrete walls we've plastered throughout this luscious landscape
Without anyone's consent … Maybe this is all just gang ****?
We never asked our neighbors if it was okay
For us to set fire to their homelands so that we do a little less work and a little more play
So sorry God
Sorry for the sounds of the cranes and the tractors
For dynamiting whole mountains ranges and hiring good for nothing contractors
And sorry about the humming birds that were forced to stop singing because our truck motors interrupted their harmonies
Forgive us for leaving our chit chat lingering in the atmosphere and for bickering alongside the soft whisper of the wind
Talking, more talking; and walking through the world with a selfish grin
Sorry for the cigarette butts that litter scenic sites and for the newspapers molding in the drain pipes
I know we’ve set fires to the weeping willows; and have killed geese to stuff our bedroom pillows
We’ve left shivering stray cats to live on street corners and have looked at the people living amongst us as foreigners
We’ve jogged past gracious sunsets with so much ease and now walk through the city streets wondering why the **** we can't breathe
Of course not one of us was moved by the fog that loomed over the world yesterday
Or by the way the grey sky was sliced in half by the mere crack crackling of the last week’s thunderstorm
So sorry God
Sorry for caring more about the how the universe fits into some 10 step mathematical equation and looking at our imprint only on occasion
We all strut down plastic streets, briefcases in hand and stress imbedded on our skin
Ruminating about our next dentist appointment and the stock markets win
While we could have tiptoed gently on the raw morning dew and danced gracefully beneath the first raindrops of the season
We instead stomped on humanity with all this selfish treason
So Im sorry for thinking that we could plaster fields of pink tulips with bright lights and billboards and then command the rivers to flow upstream
Sorry for believing that this madness we’ve created is a fulfillment of our dreams
And Im sorry for leaving the dust and dirt of our rash decisions swirling throughout the atmosphere and pointing blame for our clouded vision
Us humans, We are hybrids of dreamy ghosts and destructive savages, Inhabiting the world with our eyes closed;
And…. While this universal plague of blindness going undiagnosed
We drink away the weekends because of course the meaning of this mess….
Is to each just be a "little less stressed"
So sorry God
I'm not sure where our empathy was when it really mattered
And now were left with a world broken and shattered

There was something so melancholy in the way she stood there, sun rising behind her  bedroom window
as she carried the trash of yesterday and let it way heavily upon the metal beams of her heart
How the weight of the past and the humdrum of her every day routine, carried her like a rusted crane would a large sack of bricks
And so I watched her mesmerized from the small and narrow space between my eyelids and my dreams
A brown eyed girl, heavy and hurt
I watched how she wrapped her wet hair in a scarf and scrambled out for the subway with a protein bar
I then waited patiently for her to come home and watched how she fidgeted with the keys
And when she finally got the door open, she threw her heavy bag down
I watched how her dinner, as she cooked it seemed to melt onto her solemn face, braising her forehead like burning hot coals
I saw how she then went to her room, laid her hefty head down on her pillow, for yet a fraction of a second, to release her mind from all the heaviness, and cried tears of grey cement
Tears that quickly rushed downward and inward and hardened onto the patchwork once known as her heart
And as she remembered the food cooking on the stove, she ****** her head up, brushed off the remnants of her cemented tears; naming herself a ruthless criminal for ever feeling at all.
I then watched as though she tried to lift herself up, she could barely move as she stumbled over the boulders of yesterday and across the collapsing bridges of years before 
No matter how hard the sun would shine and no matter how many birds chirped songs of the future,
Everyday added just a little more weight, another half a pound of regret, a couple ounces of misery, boulders of abuse and bricks of insecurities
And as her grief hardened into stones; stitched into the seams of her pockets and as her anger stuck to her heart like a bunch of neodymian magnets,
she became a prisoner, cemented into her past and bound by the iron chains of fate
Left there, so terribly hard and heavy, to live together with the grief and mistrust, to neighbor the heartbreak and to commit all the rage into her wretched soul
I watched her constantly, from her tired Monday mornings to her even lonelier Saturday nights
And she slowly become apart of me, clutching onto her past for dear life, in a world full of such infinite freedom
I dreamt so many dreams for her, lived so many times her beautiful life, cried her tears, feared her fears, and ate away her deathly misery
Until I couldn’t bear to watch it any longer and I yelled a desperate yell at her from the space between my eyelids and my dreams
A yell that shocked her so much that she tumbled out of her doorway right beneath the rising sun of dawn, which slowly saturated her heart and melted away some of the misery
And after days of laying in bed, carrying the weight of the angel death on her shoulders, she picked herself up and ran
Out of her foggy apartment, across the rock solid city streets
And as she ran the small broken pieces of the past began to loosen and fall from the hinges of her bruised shoulders
The faster she went, the faster it got ripped off by the harsh and yet beautiful autumn winds
All those false hearts and broken vows, the iron chains of hatred and the bindings of regret, all loosened up just  a little and then crashed boomed onto the harsh pieces of cement that made up the sidewalk
She as if grew wings, beautiful angelic ones that lifted her off her feet into a beautiful dance, which only the bluebirds of paradise could one day mimic
And she frolicked throughout the traffic and amongst the song of the winds, with her cheeks colored pink from the rays of sun that gently kissed her soft skin
Her body and mind became one, allowing her to embrace her vulnerabilities and only once she had that unity, could she begin to feel at all
And so she stood there, like a goddess, her heart pulsing poetry and illuminating a strong light, a light so harsh that it blinded me
And when I opened my eyes, I woke up from my dream and stared back at her and she stared back at me
And I was startled to find myself looking at a familiar face
Brown eyed, brown hair, and a subtle smile