esterbloom.com

second revision: actually, this one many of you have not seen before:

polipersonal

I miss Israel

(there,

I said it)

A beach at the end

of every bus ride, the attendant

anxiety sweeter than salt-

water: getting there alive,

the relief would make me buoyant

and prone to burns.

In Jerusalem, I scribbled every word

the puffing, pacing mayor

said, and,

on a different page, the

angry-tired Palestinian, Youssef:

Your independence,

my catastrophe. I was so innocent,

I was surprised. this was 2000,

things were good then,

hopeful. when I was up North, an Arab

family gestured me onto their porch

for nuts

with everything to say to each other

and no shared tongue, we smiled

awkwardly and ate.

back on kibbutz, no one read newspapers.

I used them to clean mirrors

in hadar ochel bathrooms (my first taste

of a blue collar). people who walked by

nodded �hi,� respectful;

I could be their daughter

everyone took turns doing

this kind of work. still, the political void

rang in my ears until relieved

by a visit to cousins in Tel Aviv

The government dissolved again (they

sighed) Well,

every Tuesday and Thursday.

they fed me, walked me, even dug up

Shabbes candles so I�d feel

at home. See,

I did feel at home, especially on Fridays,

when busses stopped. Religious families

bundled to Shul and Seculars

hit the beach. I�m not observant

but it was spiritual:

dining out on Passover,

hearing Hebrew, sleeping in the desert,

just walking

through the sky-blue city

of S�fad. could you live here?

my friends asked each other.

not until Peace, we said, but felt

on the precipice of it, assumed it could happen

any day. two years later

escaping college, I spent

the spring in Denmark, the country

I knew from Number the Stars

No one carried guns, not even

cops in Copenhagen: even some of

the prisons had no walls

I trekked to classes over cobblestones,

passing pastel buildings,

hot-dog vendors, falafel stands, and

Palestinian protests in halting Danish

to halting Danes: flags and the word

Hitler I recognized: but by then, I�d seen it all

before, shuffled through a gauntlet

of police the only time I tried the city�s

only synagogue, handed my passport

to the guard at the gate and answered

his questions as flashbulbs popped:

over two years, I�d learned

the limit to how Left I could go

if I couldn�t let go of what I�d left behind me,

always planning to go back.