In the sore part of my spine, I leaned back to the sky.

I prayed so long with a cocktail napkin crumbled in my palm.

On broken sand.

Observations of a shell would say my eyes

Were closed the whole time

But

I kept my eyes open driving in the guided caravan,

Traveling,

my camera hot and bothered

Burning against my wrist and hand

I’d like to feel the world

When I see it.

 

Pushing my feet up Masada

I waved my fingers at the sun.

A single ray hit

As I put a boy on my back

Balanced  amongst the hills.

 

He was cute -

And I felt the weight tipping me over

Slowly

like a glass water pitcher.

 

 

I plucked want like apples for Adam’s lips.

Collected in colorful plastic bags

Memories

And wrappers

Spilling me between two pages of

a breathing scrapbook -

the one already planned.

 

I think of the sun sticking down on my legs

The cool evening breezes

The lightening we slept through

Seeing silhouettes at night.

 

Feeling the closeness of bodies

Not strangers

But friends

We never turned the lights out

 

 

I wish I could put it in a snow globe and bring it home for my mother

say “here is my Jewish journey,

love always

me”

 

but

 

When I was in Hebrew school

I begged my parents to bring me closer to G-d

My father died before he could see that first day

Where I  would join the carpool and

carry a very small knapsack filled with my Jewish learning.

A Siddur, a few loose coins, and pens

My friends would look forward to break where we could talk amongst ourselves.

I loved the stories

I wanted to talk about G-d the way that you talk about colors

Mixing

Blending

Beauty into my life

How to pour into one

To make the

grays of the sky

 

At my Bat Mitzvah I felt “very Jewish”

when I went away to college I wanted to again be close to G-d

I was a “mensch”

A “Hillel”

“the nice Jewish girl”

But beyond the labels

I was desperate for the meaning of these selves

 

 

Prayer is between a person and G-d

But hope between people

is what we are asking for.