Neshamele
She is listening to love songs. She steps inside them and swims through her ears, breath held, and comes out the other side falling. She wants to find herself in the violence but she is never there, so she picks another fight with you, pressing into your wounds.
I watch.
I watch as she stops up all the holes in her bathtub with corks from her tzedakah boxes. I watch you tzimtzum for her, quietly. She is sitting, naked, in the leaking bathtub, water slipping over the edges. She is shaking, shivering, saying, Blessed is the one who loved Me unconditionally.
She wants to be the water, clear like the sky, staining me like purple. She wants me to care about her, she doesn’t know that I do. I drape her chair with a cardigan, scatter her floor with daffodils. I drink too much coffee late at night, but I always get up in the morning, leaving her mint tea on the kitchen counter where I know she’ll find it.
Avinu Malkeinu! she says. Where were you when my grandmother died? Where were you when the other one went blind? I watch her daydreams, see you in them, walking through the prairies and touching the grasses. Maybe you are blind and stubborn and inflammable too.
I am in her bathroom, watching the robe slip from her shoulders, watching her fall asleep in the bathtub, watching her hair that is tied up so as not to touch the waters of your L-ve.
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