Counting Cubits

Stop.

We're living life in the fast-lane, and we forget about the little things, like laughing with your sister and smiling at a stranger and listening to old recordings to remind ourselves of where we've been and who we've yet to be. Articles of clothing, earring backings, scribbbled wonderings- I'm leaving pieces everywhere, so someday I can find myself again. And I'm collecting too- goodbye hugs and secret smiles and flickering lights below the horizon when the sun has yet to set.

Slow down.

I want to watch the flowers again, how they smile at the taste of dew.

Slow down.

I'm still a little girl, sneaking into mommy's makeup. And it's not because I'm losing weight again or because Bubbe's dying or because I'm meeting new people or because I'm leaving behind others or because I'm scared of what the future brings. It's not because our roof's still leaking or because the rain is stopping or because she falls asleep before I can now. And it's not because I don't have my own, but because sometimes, I just need to feel her. Sometimes, I just need to be held.

Slow down.

It rained for forty days and forty nights, and when the storm finally broke, it wasn't the floods that drowned me. It was the quiet, which said too much.

Turn, turn, turn

I'm craving shehecheyanu.

The sun was shining today, but it was cooler off the water, and sometimes, winter brings more comfort than the shiver of summer breeze. I'm learning of acceptance. I watch the tide roll in.

I know I shouldn't hope for it to linger, but yet, I always do.

(There's a photo sitting by my bedside. If you turn me sidewise, I look like I am smiling. I lock me in a slanted frame.)

To everything there is a season. We expect the sun to rise, the moon to set, the birds to sing, the snow to fall. We trace footsteps in the sand and know they will be washed away. We plant flowers in the springtime and know they're meant to bloom.

I've discovered my mortality.

I've begun imagining a future, and its glimmer tears apart my night. I'm collecting borrowed time. I look three ways before crossing the street. I wash my hands until they bleed. The day still shines ephemeral.

Still, the music always warns her end.

Upon Starrise

Tonight, I watched the thunder rumble. I felt the crash of lightning and saw the world illuminated in a flash of darkness. I waited for God in a breath of silence, and cried out- Sh’ma Yisrael! Adonai eloheinu! Adonai echad!

I did not wait for an answer.

I’m slipping under day-cold blankets and dreaming of a cackling fire in a home too far away. Cackling. Crackling. I don’t know how to roll my Rs.

Daddy’s fixing fixtures, or at least he’s trying to. I watch him reaching towards the ceiling. I wish I knew what he was looking for.

You’re not supposed to feel the world spinning. You’re not supposed to gasp for stronghold, grasp for deeper breath. The screaming should have stopped this morning. The echoes of frustration should not fall with sharded glass upon my floor.

Tomorrow, I’m sleeping in. If I wake beyond the crack of dawn, I won’t have to watch her shatter.

Springtime for Winter

The first day of spring, everybody wanders to the Boardwalk and steps onto the beach and pretends to feel a warmth in cool sand between their toes. They talk about lions and the learning of innocence and the coming of a lamb we no longer sacrifice. They talk of yesterday’s winds and flooding, and of March’s growing roar, but the power’s back on and we no longer see.

Last night, I woke upside down and dizzy from the weight of the world spinning beyond my grasp. The clock read 3:22. I’m teaching myself to sleep, but until then, I search for meaning. Gematria holds no answers yet. And Atlas’s only shrugging.

I’ve surrounded myself with textbooks and papers and outlines due too late. My work’s divided into chapters, but the words all feel the same. And I cannot learn of justice in a world of black and white.

I am the dissenting opinion. I am the past which history lauds, yet loathes. I am the one who walks among you and imagines anonymity. I’m not finding my voice; I’m losing it.

When I tell you not to love me, you’re not supposed to listen.

L'dor Vador

Tonight I spanned three generations. I held hands with my future and my past and we danced and sang until the lines blurred and youth countered experience and I was left with only possibility.