Women feel like the air before a tornado comes. I love how only she can make the sky turn green and fill my lungs with all of the potential energy between us.
- d
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I wonder if you weep for me
in the frozen swells of the underneath
black water laps legs
never meant for solid ground
do you know what it means to be like this
I can hear your calls in the distance
do you weep for the living
like i do for the dead?
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wishing I could stay up all night
without tiring the next day
to keep talking to you
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she could feel her inferiority by the things she’d touch.
never soft, clean, warm, always old, weathered, worn.
because she didn’t know soft, the boys treated her cold.
why raise her bar if it means having to put in work?
she’s living with how things are, why fix what’s not broken?
because the truth is how she’s living proves she’s broken.
how dare the people around her not let her be kind to herself?
why is it their place to deny her softness, kindness, gentleness?
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“Why do you hold onto something that hurts you so much?”
“What else am I supposed to do with it?”
“Throw it onto god and let go”
But I throw, and throw, and throw.
And he won’t take it.
I’m getting tired of throwing only to watch the pieces fall back down, scattered like sheets of paper, but somehow heavier.
Pages from my book.
I can’t run, I can only cover my head as they crash back down.
I Can never throw it far enough.
I must not be strong enough.
I hold onto it because the pain is the one thing no one can take from me.
“I can’t.”
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A ceremony of two candles - a poem
The red string ties around us
A fate intersects
I wonder if you see it tied around our hands
Or choking around our necks
Before me stands two wax sticks that smell of vanilla
And the wicks I bear my soul to
I tie the string around the candles
And apologize to you
I’ve created the bridge of opportunity
And waited at its gates
It burned from naivety
And every past mistake
I bring the flame to the thread
But I imagine the cold to come
When there is no chance of possibility
And darkness we can’t return from
So the string stays
It lights me on fire
I dance to our requiem
I continue to play my liar
A red string ties around us
A fate intertwined
I will not change what’s preordained
And you will pay no mind
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The Shofar Breaks Your Heart
by Dane Kuttler
When you give a girl a shofar –
no, not a proper instrument of G-d,
but a rough-cut horn with no real mouthpiece
her aunt brings back from a trip to Jerusalem,
don’t make it easy.
Put it up on the shelf in the living room
where its curled promise of a shout
will tempt her until she can reach it on tiptoe.
Tell her no one has ever found its voice,
that she will only make it grunt, bray and sputter
like the animal it came from.
Then give her a few years.
Give her an empty garage and a neighborhood
Jewish enough to understand what it’s hearing
so she can practice until
tiny tekiot burst forth from the scrap of ram.
She will be the only one who can ever shape its sounds,
can bend the call to tekiah, round off nine drops of t’ruah wailing,
fling the anguished cry of a sh’varim from its mouth.
Let her brag about this. Remember that children
are not humble creatures, that the simple act of being heard
is their great triumph. Let her be heard.
Bring her to Hebrew school.
Teach her the story of the rabbi
who told his students that he would put the words of Torah on their hearts;
that the words would only find their way in when the students’ hearts broke.
Let her sit with that tale for as long as it takes
for her own heart to shatter, for torah and poetry and forgiveness
find their way inside,
play her Leonard Cohen. Let him croon about the cracks in everything,
that’s how the light gets in, let her begin searching for light,
ask her where she thinks the cracks come from,
give her Auschwitz, give her Torquemada, give her pogrom and
quota and blacklist, the ashes of all her burnt bridges,
give her avinu malkenu, ashamnu, ashamnu, ashamnu,
watch her break
her heart
with her fist.
Give her the shofar.
Let the horn steal her breath,
let her begin to understand that she’s not holding a dead piece of animal,
but a living prayer.
Teach her: after every blast
you can hear the echo
of the still small voice.
If you listen for it,
you can hear the calls for the wild cries they are;
salute them with a straight back when they yank you from your amidah;
and should you hear a shofar blower struggle and gasp and strain for each call,
imagine yourself a trapped animal, desperate to be heard.
When it’s over,
Close your eyes.
Be. Broken. Here. Before G-d and your people. Be. Cracked.
feel the light
and the words
come
in.
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