I run far, because perhaps I can find her if I run far. She always told me to fly. I’m confused by the moments of regular living, knowing that in them I keep something distant. Not on purpose, not really. Knowing the novelty (which feels like the wrong word, but isn't) will wear off at some point (it happened last Tuesday), and there will come a time when I walk headlong into a memory, when I hear your name in spaces where no one said anything. When I realize I’m wearing the

They told me what I’d feel, but since when did I do what they say. I've inherited that much. Today I spoke about my mother in past tense. Wearing the dress I wore to her funeral, the one I swore I'd never wear again. A loose dress by my own request; I had expected to do her the kavod of burying her, and I think I'm still upset about that. I read the piece she wrote about her own mother’s death. Perhaps I’m looking for myself in how my mother mourned her mother, or perhaps I’m

I am the wild one, back from the road The headstrong daughter with a hero complex And a myriad of memories not quite where I wanted them I call my mother with this information. She is the patchwork princess Pieces pieced together between chemo treatments And I wonder if (aside from abdicated organs), She chooses what she keeps The same way she mended my torn garments when I was just a little girl A swatch of fabric here, a new button from her box Wash away the dirt but keep

Perhaps I was too young, or young at heart. Still a child in how I understood the world, and even in these moments I try to reinstate that certainty. I would go to the rebbetzins and plead promises, all fire and fury and desperation, believing the words of women could perhaps persuade G-d. Believing that there was some spell to be woven and wrought through tears over a kitchen counter that belonged to someone else, someone with a bit more self-assurances than I was ready to p

Tell me if you’re like me. Holding the sunlight on your skin, holding every aspect of your life too closely. It won’t fly away.

There is a teaching in Masechet Brachot: Five things in this world are one-sixtieth something else. Fire is one-sixtieth Gehenna; honey...

My siblings and I were raised on more practical things than most children. We learned to play hooky, and speak to spirits, and avoid...

My grandma couldn’t keep a secret to literally save her life. “I’m Jewish,” she told the soldiers at the gate one day. “But I’m not supposed

I hadn’t intended to volunteer at the rally. The last time I went to one of these, it was a largescale federation that put it together....

This is a different kind of prayer. A wandering the city at night because it’s raining prayer. I can stay out here as long as I want and...

I have a dollhouse. My father built it for my sister and me when we were just little girls, but we added on to it through adolescence....

October’s festival was boring, so I left. It ended outside an old storefront. One I hadn’t set foot in since the festival this time last...

I jest that I learned to fight from a whole team of martial arts masters, at least a dozen. And it's not untrue. But at the heart and...

I was 31 years old when I learned I have a pretty smile. Beautiful tapestry, if I pull the right threads it’ll all unravel. And it’s...

These are the holiest days of the year. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to talk to G-d this way. We’re close, he and I. We share...

I think they call these eulogies. I’m not certain. He wanted to be a cowboy. A ranch, six horses. He taught me to ride, way back in...

My mother loves us in a way that defies this world. -- I glimpsed the woman’s face from the far side of the curtain, wisps of gray hair...

Once upon a time, I made you a promise. One day, we’ll look back on everything we’re doing now and wonder how the hell we did it. I was...

I plant mint in the courtyard. Ivy along the fence, though my mother would insist it should be lavender. I even pull weeds, every once in...

“Don’t cry,” my mother tells me. I am in first grade, with a pretty knapsack and a lunch she packed me, and first grade always made me...