In Jerusalem
There is a quiet I am looking for
from bulldozers
from blastings
from smoldering anger
There is a place I have never seen
although I have imagined it during
childhood Passover seders. The ones
when my Sicilian father,
having embraced my mother’s ethnicity
as his own, hid the afikomen
almost always under the cushion
of his favorite chair
and rewarded my sisters and me
with half-dollar coins when we found it.
There was a man I used to see
whose family was from Jordan.
One morning, he said of his own lips:
Rachel, these are your lips.
We come from the same people, after all.
There is a joy I am looking for
like the moment something lost has been found
like the middle of a kiss
like home.
Next year,
maybe
next year,
in Jerusalem.
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Editor: Catherine Monkman
Photo: Bon Adrien/Flickr
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