Fragments of Cassandra

There was a season

when death
did not arrive
as a monster.

It arrived
as permission.

A quiet invitation
to stop carrying
the unbearable weight
of living.

And for a while,
I mistook surrender
for peace.

—

Then I loved someone.

Not in the ordinary way
people speak of love;

but in the way
a candle teaches darkness
that it has limits.

The kind of love
that asks impossible things.

Stay.
Grow.
Become.

Live long enough
to meet the person
you keep promising
you will be.

—

In the Torah,

God does not command us
to avoid death.

He commands us,

Choose life.

As though life
is not a burden

but a discipline.

As though every morning
is another courtroom

where the soul
must stand
and testify
that tomorrow
is still worth building.

—

So I chose.

Not because living
suddenly became easy,

but because loving you
made dying
feel dishonest.

Because how could I ask
to witness your becoming
while refusing
my own?

How could I pray
for your healing
while abandoning
mine?

—

Perhaps this
is what teshuvah
has always meant.

Not returning
to the past,

but returning
to the truest pronunciation
of my soul;

the name
God has always known

before fear
borrowed my voice
and answered
every time
I was called.

—

Some days,
choosing life
looks magnificent.

Other days,
it is brushing my teeth.
Answering a phone call.
Opening the curtains.

Planning for a future
my despair insists
I will never reach.

It is ordinary.
Holy because it is ordinary.

Like manna;
enough for today.

—

I used to believe
loving someone
meant I would die for them.

Now I wonder
if love asks
something infinitely harder.

To live.
To become gentle.
To heal.
To build a home
inside myself

so that if you ever
walk through its door,

you will find
a man or woman
who did not merely survive;

but chose,
again and again,
the blessing
set before them.

And perhaps
that has been
the miracle all along.

Not that God
parted the sea,

but that hearts,
heavier than stone,
can still decide
to cross it.



Be’ahava,
The Mourning Bird