To Jaclin: Israel is a body
I live in this little body, shaky mostly but sometimes sturdy. It is covered in something thin and mostly smooth but permeable more than I would like. I am a human. I am humbled by this fact and it revives me. I observe its functionality, willing my breath to be voluntary but comforted knowing that it's not. I stare at my arms, looking up and down the winding veins, squinting to see the bloodflow. I don't but I know it's there, traveling to my heart and warming my body. I know about living but I feel death; I feel it at night when my legs are tangled in the sheets and coated with a layer of perspiration. I feel the sweat start to creep upwards as if swallowing my body in moisture. I feel it in the sun as if the hot rays are stopping my blood in my veins and solidifying all that should be liquid. It is as if I become a statue and I cannot break away from the glare or the granite that I am composed of. I dream of Israel and Greece and Afghanistan, the places I want to be and think I might die in. I see myself asleep in beds on beaches in streets riddled with bullets and hatred and tabouli. I am a house. Israel, from far across ocean and through air and under land, is a body. It is my body and you are inside of it.