Tammuz

It was a day from childhood summers

when you could stay inside

without the urgency to seize the day

when there would always be more of this—

this heat, this scent, these cherries

when you could still go to the beach tomorrow and again.

The sunset turned brownstones yellow.

We sat in my glowing garden

one day and fifty years after the landing on the moon.

An ocher crescent waxed on the label of the wine you brought.

I stroked your naked feet that rested in my lap.

Your eyes were green and amber.

One day and nineteen hundred fifty years ago,

the city’s walls were breached.

I was supposed to guard the temple courts—

how could I not yield to summer’s siege?

Julia Knobloch is a rabbinical student at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles and the author of two volumes of poetry: Book of Failed Salvation (2021) and Do Not Return (2019).