Monday, May 23, 2022

25-36 toward the Omer

netzach shebnetzach-chesed shebyesod

25. One plane leads to another, and I end up in Brigadoon, or something like it, two hours ahead of six and a half hours later.
26. I get my nails done with my grandmother, but we are back to back, so we don’t talk much. I keep running my thumbs over them.
27. Smoother than usual. Buffed down, enhanced. They won’t start chipping for a week and a half. She sloughed away the callous on the ball of my foot,
28. which was propped up to face her, the heel unseen. On Shabbat, I walk a loop, walk again the other way, swim some laps in an infinity pool.
29. The way back can be easy, and it can be hard, and it’s never quite back. There’s only a week and a half until it’s time to go home,
30. the other one, where I won’t arrive to leave a week and a half later. The week is full of humility and splendor and a lag that I notice, consider,
31. perpetuate. When I don’t cut through, nothing is finished, and nothing is started, and maybe I would rather have the little deaths, if I can find them, than this floating immortality.
32. Missed, the circle edge of dead skin from the old blister from my right shoe keeps me an imperfect house among imperfect houses, as though I needed the reminder. Maybe I did.
33. Exposed, I test myself daily, mask indoors, live outside, sleep separate, shower when nobody is around. A bear scratches itself against the wooden bench, paws at the tire swing before the snows come.
34. The trees are vulnerable, hands open to the sun. The burden is caught and is heavy. They will wait as they can for change. I am freed from space by a negative, return, wonder
35. if there are eggs still in nests and if the birds have what to do. First there are white mountains, then there are green mountains, then they’re white. When you act, you won’t always get
36. as far as you’d hoped, God says, or even thought necessary. But will it be enough? I say. Do you think you can incomplete the heavens and the earth? God says. I raise my eyes, see.

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