Bonfires For Nobody

“I was seeing not you / but something that lives between us, that can live / only between us.”

“I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.”

“as honey: desire is poured upon your lovely face”

“I am someone who did not die when I should have died.”

“The old Jews rarely admitted good fortune. And if they did, they’d quickly add kinahora— let the evil eye not hear. What dummkopf would think the spirits were on our side? But even in a tropical paradise laden with sugarcane and coconut, something like the shtetl’s wariness exists. In Hawaii, I’m told, a fisherman never spoke directly, lest the gods arrive at the sea before him. Instead he’d look to the sky, the fast-moving clouds, and say, I wonder if leaves are falling in the uplands! Let us go and gather leaves. So, my love, today let’s not talk at all. Let’s be like those couples eating silently in restaurants, barely a word the entire meal. We pitied them, but now I see they were always so much smarter than we were.”