#challenge23

In his poem “Rosh HaShanah,” the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai offers the reader a micro-view of the life of a poet amidst a landscape of brutal, state-sanctioned atrocity. As he watches French news reportage, Shabtai’s life continues as comfortable and as ordinary as ever. He cooks pasta; he browns pine nuts; he eats dinner. He writes a poem. We read it. 

“Rosh HaShanah” is one of the poems contained within Shabtai’s poetry collection J’Accuse, written in the first couple years of the Second Intifada. In the collection, Shabtai accuses the Israeli government of committing brutal atrocities against the Palestinian people. In an interview with Jeffrey Brown, Shabtai elaborates: "When I was young and when I was in love with the land, suddenly we had a land, full of possibility, the ability to make the land beautiful, to grow up, and also to cross the borders for peace. And now, suddenly, it’s another image. It’s an image of closing, of a wall, and the wall is also something that’s internalized in the people. It’s a wall of fear, of hate, of incomprehension.” In his poetry, Shabtai mourns for the Palestinian people as he also mourns for the possibilities for beauty, peace, and justice lost to the IDF’s callous actions. He also wonders how even he, a poet openly critical of the Israeli government, might have a wall built inside of him.

This collection resonated with me. It resonated with me in ways that I am finding hard to unpack. As an American Jew raised in a Zionist community, I have had such a hard time grappling first with the reality that the Israeli government can and has acted in unjust ways, and then with another reality that people whom I love and admire will never speak out about this. It also resonates with me because this notion of “internalized walls” is so familiar to me. I am currently finishing my dissertation (!!!), and actively revising a chapter on Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy. There, too, he speaks about how Jim Crow and architectures of segregation have created “walls in [people’s] minds.” (For more on this, SEE MY DISS!) And then there is Trump’s wall. I worry so much about the damage that wall will do. But I am inspired by acts of resistance. Foolishly, perhaps, I have hope.

"Please stay," he whispered into her hair, inhaling the mixture of her scent and her rose detergent. His famously confident voice degraded to a pleading tone, one he only saved for intense moments.

Tangling his arms beneath hers and across her stomach, she was held captive in the lover’s arms. He was slightly drunk in actions, but immensely sober in intentions. Lucy had to leave back home, ditching the tour bus to return to a dysfunctional household. And she would have given anything to stay. Because her home was in his arms. But that wasn’t the case.

The frame was threading their relationship thin, any time a part would result as a huge endeavor in their love life. They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but you never hear about the insecurities growing stronger. With a love that was undeniable but even bigger egos in the way, who knew what was held in store.

If he were to be tested on everything he knows about Leila, Louis would answer each question correctly like he's studied her his entire life. He can list her favorite TV shows and state every book she's ever read--Louis can even locate her lost car keys because she tends to drop them in the same spot of her room every other week or so.

It's a bit much maybe, the way he feels, but it's clear and it's simple. If he could sprint across the ocean just to see her, he would.

Sometimes it worries him that he's endlessly falling for her eyes and her laugh and the way her lips form the simplicity of his name, but she'll trace her fingertips along the nape of his neck--right where his hair ends--and she'll pull him close and whisper 'I love you' just to reassure him his feelings are looking into a mirror.

"I don't want to be alone tonight," Lelia confides with ease, but she's smiling delicately at Louis like she'll never find herself in anyone else but him. "Please stay."

must include:

- characters: louis tomlinson - phrase: "Please stay." - a simile

200 words exactly.

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