Two poems to be reconciled

How Does He Feel

When survivors 

create victims;

When exiles 

come home 

with guns;

When children of the covenant

are drunk on fear

of insecurity, seemingly

justifying every abuse;

When Abraham’s offspring

become like stones,

scorning prophets

by scorning strangers,

who are in fact their siblings;

When His bride

lies in an abuser’s bed

and calls it biblical?

(Romans 9:1-2, 10:1-2)

Bus #961, Beit She’an to Jerusalem

A young woman speaks

in the language I know

of a language I don’t.

A language of people

whose mere mention evokes

a thousand stories of oppression.

Her people.

Her oppression?

The young woman shares

with the loved one she has called

how it feels to come home

for the first time

and to pray

in, not just towards

the holy city

that we approach together.

This young woman struggles
to transcend adequacy

and become eloquent

in her other language.

She is anxious

to belong,

to prove that she belongs.

Where does anyone belong?

This guilty yet innocent, 

unattractive yet beautiful 

young woman shows me

the way towards my destination. 

And as our ways part,

I begin to wonder:

“How different are they?

Are we?

Are they?”