On the Night of the 100th Day
I finally dream the war
On the night of the 100th day, I finally dream the war. A man and his son on the other side of the world. Missing maps. Darkened rooms. Rooms with no doors. Nothing to hold us in. Nothing to let us out.
On the night of the 100th day, I finally dream the war. “I don’t see it that way.” I mustered my courage to speak. Tunnels. Ruins. Walking in the opposite direction against the crowds. Alone.
As daylight returns here in New England where I sit and sip my coffee amidst twinkle lights and morning headlines, I want to do more than grasp at fragments of memory.
On the night of the 100th day, I finally dream the war. It’s difficult to remember when everyone is screaming. It’s difficult to breathe when everyone is silent. It’s difficult to see through the dust of distortion. It’s difficult to conjure a voice when you have to explain you are human.
On the night of the 100th day, I finally dream the war. Assignment: Write a poem about the war without using the word “war.” You’ve already failed. Try again. Assignment: Write a poem about a dream without using the word “dream.” Assignment: Speak. I command you. The heart will not be commanded. Assignment: Weep. I command you. The heart will not be commanded.
Who are you to demand a response from me? And who are you at all? Whom am I addressing? You know who I am. I am that I am.
Assignment: Write a poem to God without any of God’s names. Then I cannot say I watched a man, anguished, say to a jeering crowd, “Rape is not resistance.” In witness, in solidarity, I echoed his cry. In return, a barrage of a different kind of bomb: “Holohoax.”
Diasporism. Exile. Zion. Homeland: Land or Book or both? Is longing a condition of being Jewish? A people apart? Break with tradition. Assimilate. Deny. Blend. Aspire. The story of my people. Continuity, break. Repair, break. Too Jewish. Not Jewish enough. Break. Trauma, break. Resurgence, healing, new trauma, new breaks. Whisper, hide. Blend. Cast out. Star, star, star.
On the night of the 100th day, newly minted 50 myself, I finally dream the war. Each chapter a fractal, a story ever doubling and halving, repeating, changing, inverting, revealing, concealing. Stars exploding. What is the sound of one Jew dreaming?
Assignment: Write about antisemitism without using the word antisemitism. I think I’ve seen this film before / and I didn’t like the ending. Assignment: Walk through the shadow of the valley of death and fear no evil. Jewish joke: Evolve without breaking.
On the night of the 100th day, I finally dream the war. When I was 16 my parents gave me a star. It explodes around my neck. I am consumed.
The grandmother whose eyes they say I have chain-smoked and baked bread and if she lived today would write a mean op-ed. The other grandmother bore secrecy into four daughters, quoted scripture, went up to the land. The currency of secrets in exchange for success. The American dream. The Israeli dream. No. These are not the same dream. Ask my bones.
A command is not an assignment. What is it to obey when God says: Choose life, that you shall live? Tell me, dream. Tell me, ancients. What am I to do with this: “Let all my bones declare: THE INFINITE! Who is like you? You, who save the poor from those of greater strength, the destitute and the oppressed from their exploiters.”
On the morning after the 100th day, I wake.
Breathing in, I see that I am still breathing. Breathing out, I see that I must pray. Star between collarbones. A Jewish body. Placing my feet on the floor, the day beckons, a commandment not to speak perfectly, but to keep seeking the words.
Powerful, searing, necessary words. Thank you, friend.
Oh, Jena. This is haunting and brilliant.