Miriam’s Eyes Changing
She didn’t like me much
and I didn’t particularly care for her.
Letting me know in increments
mostly with her stare
sometimes words
that the others were gifted,
chosen,
somehow above where I was.
Making me feel ordinary
questioning
insignificant in my own skin.
Wishing I could become a snake
that I might shed the scales of uncertainty
maybe then
I would feel worthy when she was near.
My family never did that to him,
they viewed him with value—
but she did that to me
and I loathed her for it.
Yet the capsule of time journeyed on
discarding doubt
as the ephemeral minutes departed:
leaving her exposed
and me stronger,
I was not sure I was at ease with
the newer rules
for the ground was now uneven.
That is when I realized I loved her,
when her glare traveled into vulnerability
and her dreams were left suspended in clouds:
she looked innocent
fresh
like someone who
could start over.
She told me how she mourned them
blood strangers in a distant land.
They hid in homes, then were sent to camps
and after that, their fate was tragic.
But one survived and visited,
becoming transfixed
in the crevices of her thoughts.
Each time she reminisced
like it all happened Tuesday,
tears invariably plopped on her wounded chest.
Nothing
not even her husband’s death
could replicate such a response:
a faraway uncle,
throwing open the taxi door
while the mystified teen gazed from the second-story window
wrought with anticipation
I have my own narratives, but none like these.
These are stories which can alter,
modify
rearrange how a person perceives life,
or circumstances,
or daughter-in-laws.
Yet we detoured past that:
laughing in winter
sharing wine by the fire
savoring ice cream bars—
uttering, “I love you.”
And something tells me
as melancholy fills our eyes
when I prepare to leave,
I might even be a Gentile
she could cry for.