My Foreign Fire

May we each find our stories within stories

 

 

Tell the story

as if you were once

slaves in Egypt,

as if you were once

the chosen children

of the High Priest

on the eighth day,

privileged to be the first

to enter with your fire pans -

no longer slaves

you mistook this for

freedom.

 

Some say they choose

to become one with the fire

like the Rabbis who went

into the Pardes

and never emerged,

becoming our roots

and blossoms.

 

Others suggest

they didn’t listen,

unwilling to wait

for what might never arrive,

hungry for importance, confused

by the smoke of desire  -

when the calling was to fill

they imposed their foreign

flames they once dreamt

would belong.

 

I have stood for many years

at the mouth of the tent,

grasping the emptied pan

with scorched hands

finding and losing

the balance between

too far, too close

trying not to be consumed,

as on the operating table

when I was twenty-five

cut and sewn back

by surgeons’ hands,

their burning stitches,

my mind veiled,

the fire of Presence

entering the Mishkan

of my young woman's body

the surprise of a lengthening

life, learning how to step

in, to claim my belonging

to the once foreign fire and

remaining embers