What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real? Toni Morrison, “Song of Solomon” I am walking up the hill. The sun is shining the way it only does here. And Italy. Tuscany, Castelina in Chianti to be precise. That particular glow that promises jasmine and butterflies and puppies. And yes, cliché, fields upon fields of sunflowers. That also know the returning dusk. Just over the hill. The dark of night. And endless quiet. Today I feel the heaviness of night. E

All I’ve done all my life is disobey. Edith Piaf It starts with the ribs. In the dark of morning I grasp for breath. Feel into the ribs. Did I pull a muscle in my sleep? At this age I pull muscles everyday, looking this way or that way, stepping off a curb. But, sleeping? No, this one is story-attached. Corset-binding. A thread woven in between each rib. I try to wish it away but even with the ocean sway of my husband’s breath I cannot lull myself back to sleep. So I lie. I

He was free. Free to feel whatever he felt. Toni Morrison, “The Bluest Eye” The cement is dark from wet. I set out. Rain all night and now a break. Unsettled feet rush outside. In search of safe—cloudless sky and gust-free streets. But really. I seek safe inside. A mind too flooded with sad. Heavy dark rain clouds. I want the sun. The smell of spring jasmine. And red flowering cacti. I fear deluge. Dark sunless days like Petersburg winters. It’s only one or the other, I see

She asks how I am, my friend. I say it’s hard to breathe. Grief old. Memories resurfacing. Or rather, surfacing. For the first time, hitting like a summer Sinai wind. I’m flattened. And four. Afraid of everything. And my mind…I tell my friend about a writer whose name I can’t remember who likens her mind to a dangerous neighborhood. So she doesn’t go there alone. How are you I ask my friend. Grief. Too many deaths. We ask if there’s a time limit? To grief. Shouldn’t we be ove

It is raining hard on the windows of the cab. I close my eyes but I’m too tired to sleep, my day already nearly twenty-four hours old. But I’m here. Or rather not there, which pangs me to say. Even in the silence of my mind. Which, is not as silent as I would wish. Now, on the windshield the sound of rain, then gravel under tires. The volume exponential. I am waiting. For the warning. The shrill sound that scoops me out of bed. Then sirens. Then silence. Then air defense, we

· after Michale Rosen She asks me if I ever read the book and I say no until I am standing at the bookstore holding the white board book and a few decades disappear. And I’m there. In my rocking chair. In Paris. Little Elly on my lap sounding out her first words. Going on a bear hunt … and in our reading she is the little girl leading the way with a stick and I am mama-protector, pulling up the rear. Forever there, with big arms to scoop up, tissues to wipe tears, imag

Why is it closed I ask the woman standing in front of the closed yellow gate, next to the sign that says open, it’s Tuesday she says. Tuesday? Yes, she says sometimes they close the gates on Tuesday and I ask if that means the lake and the trail are closed and she says she supposes no and says they can’t stop her and she slips in through the side. Of the gate, why not? There’s no sign saying closed, no Dante-like warning about abandoning hope. But to be honest I think they go

I have always been too sensitive, a weeper from a long line of weepers. I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof. -Ada Limon I ask the woman with the ocean blue t-shirt, toothy smile and clipboard what cause she is advocating for. She tells me water and explains how the cleanliness of the tap water here varies by neighborhood. And tax base. She says people in the south of the city are getting sick. And dying. And I start drying. And so does she. She asks what my na

Everything you can think of is true. Tom Waits I turn the corner toward Cowles Point, which is really more like a curve than a point, still I stick to my side, the right side, trained by the lanes in Tel Aviv. I shut out the world with my Rachmaninoff in my ears when two cyclists come around the bend, spread themselves wide, across both sides, nearly collide. With me, but before I can even react they blow past and I’m back to my Rachmaninoff. When a lady who has a purple t-

I am holding two jars of tahini, trying to decide. Why one has a green lid and one a red, and I’m trying to decipher the labels in Hebrew that look the exact same when I see to my left a woman I know from dance and she smiles and I smile and I see she’s explaining in English and then in Hebrew to her toddler son that he can’t sleep on the apples that lie in a pile on a very low shelf. I ask if she can help me with my tahini debacle and before we know it we are telling our st

I am driving home from the store. East on Mission Gorge. It’s spring and the air is dry and my throat is dry. And I am so something bigger than anger I start to cry. From the pretense of it all, the big-toothed smiling cashier in her green apron asking her obligatory hi how are you and all I could offer was a half-baked Mona Lisa non-scowl. How could she know how are you is a dangerous questions today because I just might answer the truth, but what is the truth, the whole tru

I drove all the way to Kearny Mesa to scrub away my skin. To this place I’d been once. Years before with my mom for Mother’s Day. That reminded me the banya on the north side of the Fontanka I went to in Leningrad. In minus-thirty winter weather when my California skin wanted to unfreeze, feel warm. Or at least, alive. And after paying twenty kopecks for two hours of scrubbing with chunky grey salt and being beaten with birch branches, all while wearing a little felt cap so a

He says he is going on a meditation retreat, southern France, by way of Barcelona, the only flight he could get out. Why France, I ask, he doesn’t know just knows he wants to meditate, the young man who could be my son. I ask him if he’s heard of Thich Nhat Hahn and he says no, chuckles, says he’s new to this meditation-thing and asks who he is and I tell him about his village in France and his anti-war protests and his attempts to bring people together. To find peace. And he

It’s the Eucalyptus that gets me, grounds me. Takes me down into the dustiness of this lake. Two minutes from my high school, ten from home. Where we rented row boats and sunbathed covered in olive oil. Before we knew how stupid we were, and doused our hair with lemon juice, hoping for highlights on dark brown hair. Where I skipped rocks with my dad. Had picnics with the cousins, where the ducks sing a familiar symphony. Today, a sort of lullaby. And I cry, wipe tears on clot

We are all here. In one room, erev Pesach. I don’t miss the irony, leaving Egypt. Literally, fleeing Egypt with a plane ticket that says, mrmrs for my name and I wonder if anyone has a ticket with a name. But I am too afraid to ask and push the fear away like I’ve pushed away the need to pee for already half a day. Too afraid to lose a place in the dozen or more lines I’ve waited in today. Thirsty because the last liquid I drank was before my 4am departure in the car. We are

I collapse into her arms, my mama who birthed me and though I tower over her and have babies of my own, I feel a sort reentry to the womb. And I cry tears I have been holding in, afraid the sound of myself would deafen me to the sirens that save me. And two hours later in what is her night and maybe my tomorrow but day three of my journey I don’t remember what day it is, we are sitting at the kitchen table where she would feed little me oatmeal with brown sugar and butter but

That's the third cup of coffee I’ve had to dump, I say to my neighbor with the grey wool beret coming back from the shelter time number who remembers, and it’s only a little after seven and he says he doesn’t make coffee at home, he goes to the café around the corner, the one with books and good sandwiches, next to the pizza place and I say I can’t wait for a café, I need coffee first thing, after maybe three hours of sleep if I’m lucky. He nods and we drag our somnambulisti

It’s 7:02 am and my husband asks if I want tea, our usual time but what is usual these days, I say and ask if we can have tea this afternoon, I want to leave early, give myself time, because you never know and he nods, always supportive, and just as I slip on my boots because the weather looks like rain— sirens. Of course, what did I think, good I’m dressed, I think, still enough time to make it, I think and make my way across the street, but something today feels off. More o

My friend in America texts me, how are you today, and and I laugh to myself. Today. Too big a time. I reflect on a response, sitting on a bench in the sun. Nearly thirty minutes before class. But you never know these days. How long anything will take. Cooking a meal. Or walking to dance—the one thing I do in the day. I’m listening to banjo. Which feels out of place. Which is exactly what I seek and I think about my friend’s question. And just then I hear a siren and turn of

it’s the little things that pull, that punch, leave a black hole, cold questions with no answers, today on the way, empty playgrounds sidewalks previously spilling over with puppies and parents with strollers and scooter zooming too fast, not today, not for many days, and this morning or was it night running to the shelter, looking for the lady with the dog staying at her boyfriend’s apartment because his shelter is better, absent, and I worry the worst—did the dog die? or di