The Shadows of the Body

My father came home
With a stack of X-ray films.
He went into his office and put them
Up, one-by-one,
In front of the light.
I sat behind,
Unnecessary,
And watched as the light formed
Bones and stomachs and necks.
Puzzle pieces glowing.
He called me over,
Look at this
Kid
He swallowed a coin.
See?
And there I saw a shekel –
Small circular shadow in the light.
But you wouldn’t know the currency
From the image.
I gaped as I imagined,
Which of my classmates was this?
My world was confined to my kindergarten.
If anything happened,
It must have been there.
A war, a holiday, a storm,
Confined to my nap-room.

Last week my father sat in his office,
In front of the computer screen
Glowing with bones and stomachs and necks.
He called me down to see,
Look at this
Woman
She swallowed a butter knife.
See?
And there I saw, with clear-cut precision,
The long shadow in the light.
But you wouldn’t know her reasons
From the image.
I gaped as I imagined
What that must have felt like.
What thoughts led her to this,
What fears.
A war, a holiday, a storm,
Confined to her mind.

/michal

Green Bananas

My unripe self-love is overcome by the flaws I find, I search for.
I long to soothe, to sing myself to sleep, but 1AM stretches out
Longer than a day.

The greenness of the relationship I have with myself
Is ever so slightly warming up.
A colour of yellow or orange or maybe even a tint of red.

I try to hold all the pieces together until they are ready;
Until the glue between the cracks is just a little bit harder,
Just a little bit stronger.

You take out my hair-dryer from the bottom drawer
And offer to help harden the glue;
Ripen my self-love.

/michal

Silence

I hear the clock, I hear your breath.
I hear the birds, unbound by time.
The cars go by on the one-way street
All headed to the same place (somewhere far).

I hear my thoughts.
I hear the wind.
(I wonder if they are the same).
I wish to breathe, to remain still,
But the future whispers impatiently my name.

/michal

Pain Killer/Acceptor

Part One:
One of my organs hurts
Me from the inside.
I try to move, to show you where,
But you tell me to see a doctor.

Part Two:
I hold the pills
That He prescribed
Ever mighty, firm.
I take them slow, I take with food.
I wait for the pain to soften.

Part Three:
I sit, no pills.
Today I will breathe.
I approach the pain anew.
I sit, no pills.

/michal

The Window of My House, a Spaceship

I am by a big window
Staring at the sky.
I see light but no sun,
I feel light but no warmth.
I hear a hum.
I feel the rough carpet beneath me
Threatening to burn my skin if I move too fast.
I stay still,
Looking out
Looking for
A sun. Any will do.
The universe is vast and uncaring.
I could be elsewhere,
I could be here.
I am forever somewhere,
Or nowhere at all.

/michal

Holiday Spirits

Like the melted wax on a menorah by the sixth night of Hanukah
Accumulated,
I reheat to remelt
Actively letting go
Of your buildup.

/michal

Refocus on the Oxygen

He looked a little dead inside
With his eyes glazed, forward
Staring, searching
For himself. I found
Myself tilting my head as I looked
At him looking
At the air between us.

/michal

How Time Exists and Moves and Elopes

Do you feel what everybody feels?
Or are you alone, your soul wandering,
A mended body
Flowing
Beating
Something inside, like a heart
(Or a fist)
Signalling a life
(Or a suffering)
Perhaps both.

Yet you step forward each moment
Into the forgiving future
That allows you to be whole
If you wish
And healed
If you try
And yourself
If you dare

/michal

Uncovering / Recovering

I have filled myself with others’ stories.
Stories to avoid my own.
Stories to carry,
to ponder,
to listen to on repeat in my own head late at night,
when I am forgetting to be writing my own.

Stories of pain
and difficulty and happiness and
memories, felt or lost or forgotten
until they are told out loud.

I have been overflowing with other selves
I absorbed, mistakenly
trying to fit them into my own concave interior,
a container to be filled and shipped
somewhere far. I yearn to lock
and steal these stories inside of me,
take them to a new place where I might bury them,
and as I dig their grave, in the soil I find
myself, waiting to be lifted out and taken home.

/michal

Allegories and Other Mistakes

I dance into another
Heavily trying to be light.
But he laughs at everything I say
Smiling
Forgiving of – or oblivious to –
The me inside of me, hiding.

/michal