She sits cross legged in the grass.
An ant crawls by and she flicks it away.
It limps and she shudders and sighs. She puts
her eyes behind her fingers.
She is three again and playing
with her father. She is hiding
because if she can’t see him
then he can’t see her. Logic holds.
She is ten and chasing
a boy across the playground and she rips
his shirt in an act
of passion. She is too young
to enter the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
She is fifteen and in love and playing dominoes.
She is learning about her grandfather
throwing chairs out the apartment window
along with the soldiers. He is
too young to know, but she is old enough now,
or is at least pretending.
She is eighteen. She is trying
to mix his stories with her own,
kneading dough in circular motions. She lights
the Shabbat candles and breathes in
the smell of new fire.
She is older now and understands more of it,
or she has grown fully confident
in her ability to fool.
She has learned to let people go, or
not quite. She has heard people’s stories
only when she is almost asleep or
reading a book or
when they are drunk and have little
to lose, but she has listened as best
she can. She is trying
to understand it all together.
She is knitting a scarf for her father,
and the blue and grey weave together
for just one row.