Microcosms in the Alley Way

To Go There: Little Red Riding Hood
by Emily Stern

    our conversations are cyclical that i would need a magnifying gladness of hindsight to see anything within this glass of water. it is swollen, my whole body, too much salt, or milk, or something. and what is everything being said about lions and lambs? Their natures do not seem so different. lambs and jellyfish… or stingrays, lionesses and fleas. so instead i pray in the midst of conversation in my mind, always wanting to escape and being glad to be here.

    Jerusalem’s a lion they said. i didn’t even know Jerusalem. He asks me about archetypes. We speak about story. His stories bring more to the table. they are thickest milk. more complex than the point he makes, than the point. “do you enjoy yourself with me?” “Of course…” I say. He couldn’t tell. he described me exactly. Not quite sure to go there with you.

    i am thinking of my husband, the one i married in my mind. and life combusts. We are in the alley way. talking about how we have been taught by stories like Little Red Riding Hood,  learning forests are dangerous, about learning fear, but I think i was taught that wolves were kinda sweet. … and so my mind talks a good prayer. it is a wishful thinking machine.  it wants the best for all beyond ecstatic things for you. much love. I get you so much. You are made by Gd.

    and I don’t get you. at all! in a very literary way, you are not mine because you’re unknowable, but also married. but even so, he seems not to get me either. understand me.  I assume he knows the deeper meaning when he calls me royalty and I play along. I pray along with you. wanting me to be something. I try to give the lesson about how we are all one, i’m not what you think… I’m…. he says it’s a given, doesn’t need to be said. I already knew that too. and then he told me these moments matter

    the first man i was ever with i said no to before I was with him. i said i want intimacy. and that is different than desire. i feel like I’m always in needah נידה, i said. not just single. i feel like an untouchable. Singing to King Saul. is it the same thing that always happens? that it’s harder for gd to keep lions and lambs from laying together than to keep them not? i’m so over the pay off. what are we supposed to do with foretold prophecy? just sit back and experience the process? Cry Love? step into the symbology?

i watched the light descend upon you. and i want to go there with you.