38 weeks

I want to write her name in the sky.
And watch it blow away in the wind.
 
I want to scream her name with joy
Pronouncing every syllable
Savoring each sound like fine wine
Or rich chocolate cake.

I want to fold perfect paper airplanes filled with each letter
And fly them into space.
 
I want her name in a bottle
Across the sea.

I want her name to mean something in this world.
I want to know it is more than a whisper from my mouth
Or a dream inside my head.

I want the idea of her to be
Honored and exalted.
              She is holy and her name is holy
 
Her name is my love
Her name is forgiveness
Redemption
And light
Her name is my devotion
my loss
my grief
my pain
my wonder

Her name is my secret

My heart is broken but when they cut it open, no matter how they poke and prod,
her name will remain in my swishing heartbeat
in the oxygen that fills my body
Lifting my exhaustion.

It is her name that pulls at my heart
Making it beat faster

She's the angel that pushed me down to earth with my broken heart
The only sign of her remaining in the indentation
of her fingertip above my lips.
Her fingertip that erased my memory
leaving me with a lifetime of searching for the answer
to some foggy thought I can't quite catch

She's the piece that will mend my broken heart
not enough for perfection, but enough for life
So, she doesn't have to save me again

Her name is a blessing
She is my blessing
May her memory be a blessing

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Resurrecting Levine

Image
This story was part of a writing challenge proposed by my American Jewish Lit professor in grad school. After reading Bernard Malamud's short story  from 1955, "The Angel Levine," about a Jewish black angel who saves an old Jewish tailor in order to get his wings.  The story looks deeply at Jewish identity, posing the question: what makes a Jew?  In turn, my professor asked, "where did this angel come from? What was his life when he was alive? Was he born Jewish?" Resurrecting Levine I grew up during the Harlem Renaissance, the son of an entrepreneur who made his money opening speakeasies in Jungle alley. Jazz musicians, homosexuals, bohemians, and upper class whites flocked to his establishments.  In 1926, when I was four-years-old, we moved to a Hamilton Heights brownstone. At the time (although much has changed) Hamilton heights was a desirable neighborhood for affluent whites, and my father’s success with his speakeasies sprinkled through...
Read more

Jealousy's Funeral

Image
I'm staring at the coffin, plain, wood, filled, when she walks into the sanctuary. I can feel her as her heels pad softly against the flat brown carpet. The weight of the air shifts. Particles gather around me, closing my throat. All I can smell is my wife on her clothes. It's as if their pheromones mixed together just to taunt me. My body heaves forward. I try in vain to blow out stale fearful air, but her presence suffocates me. The word lover whispers in my ear from some unknown voice as I tightly close my eyes. I'm sure the congregation thinks I'm holding back tears for her. I am. I'm not. I don't know. I've never felt jealous in my whole life. I've never understood the nights my wife would cry in our bed or on the floor because she felt I was keeping some dark secret. For her, jealousy lived just under the surface, a constant threat to our marriage. Her crying pissed me off so much; I fantasized about hitting her, just to shut her up. Every time I ...
Read more

Hanging

Image
For years, I taught Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir, Night , in my community college classroom. Night  is the story of Elie and his father's life inside the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during the Holocaust. It is spare, heart-wrenching, and honest. He tells the tale of a people moved from humanity to degradation and the unraveling of relationships caused by such inhumanity. Many times, broken relationships were that of fathers and sons, but they were also broken relationships with G-d. Elie struggles to hold onto his relationship with his own father while, at the same time, despairs over the violent breakdown of his relationship with G-d. While teaching, my students and I found ourselves stopping at the same passage: A young boy is arrested and hanged by the Nazis for not giving up his superior who was planning a revolt. The entire camp stood helplessly by as they watched this young boy die slowly. While death surrounds them everyday, the boy's ...
Read more