more edited version...
Dear Anne frank,
The other night I finished your diary. I found the unedited version including your thoughts on sex and sexuality that your father left out of the first published version of your diary. I flipped your pages close to my heart as if I was reading my own diary, as if I didn’t want anyone to see your secrets or mine between the lines. Anne, I think you may be following me or I may be following you. I’m thinking about you. I think your eyes may be brushing the inside of my skin. I remember when I was alone in Paris . I was outside reading your words, my back leaning up against a random wall. I stood up, your thoughts still swelling on the tip of my tongue. I turned around and I had been leaning on 'the Anne frank' high school. Then days later I was in a cozy English bookstore in the heart of Paris. Couches and old books piled everywhere. I found an inviting couch to rest my legs and read your book. While turning your page, out of the corner of my eye, I see your face. Pictures of you were taped all over the wall and I realize I was sitting in the 'Anne frank ' corner of the bookstore without knowing it. Your eyes keep jumping out at me.
I think we would have been friends Anne. I think we would have gotten along and could have laughed away our pains together. I want to fold you in my arms Anne. I want to comb your hair and tell you how pretty you are. How your eyes scream aliveness. I want to drink tea and complain about our mothers. I want to break the window of the attic and take you outside. I want to stop the sound of guns and airplanes. I want to run you a hot bath and put candy in your mouth. I want to buy you a million pens so you can write forever. I want to give you some privacy, share my favorite books with you. I want to light Shabbat candles with you and let the candles flicker with our dreams. I want to burn the yellow stars in a big pile and stomp them with your shoes. Anne, I’m mourning for you in a way that I’ve never mourned before. I don’t know you, I’ve never seen the shape of your face, and I’ve never seen you walk or shift your eyes. I’ve only read your diary. Each word pressed under my gut, a pile of rocks sitting in my stomach. Anne, I think I love you. Yesterday, somebody, out of the blue told me that I look like you.
I can’t sleep Anne. I’m lying on a pile of contradictions.CONCRETE I’m propped up against complexities and I need to talk with you. I can’t sleep Anne. I seem to have swallowed a lion, choked on my religion, and gotten my hands stuck in the muddy waters of our people’s paradox. Lately, I feel this push and pull so fiercely. On the one hand, I’ve never felt this connected to my religion, to our religion. I feel as if my hands are rubbing against the Torah, my ankles are tied to ancient scripts and Talmudic lettering. Anne, there are songs under my breath that have been sung for thousands and thousands of years. Songs that were born under the earth, flickered from the hands of god. Anne, I don’t believe in god but I believe that her hands gave us those songs so that this scatteredness, this mass fraction, this thing we call Diaspora, this sense of homelessness and home could find common ground, common sound, common song. I have this opening of memories lately that brings me home. I remember coming up to my grandmother’s knees and watching her light the Friday night candles. She would bow her head, bring the heat close to her face with her hands, and with a sense of calm urgency she recited a prayer. I remember the prayer even though I haven’t recited it in over ten years. I guess that’s the power of religion or tradition that a prayer ten years past can still hang firmly in the closet of my most inner walls. I want to wrap my hands along the contours of my Judaism. I want to sing around the Seder table with you Anne. I want to dip bread and honey and spark candles for the future. There is a sense of justice in our culture, a sense of humanity in our traditions. Humanity is the color of my grandmother’s eyes. There is a door left open ajar at all times- a reminder that we are still here, that we have survived, that we can wear the Star of David not as a marker of murder and degradation but as a symbol that we have survived. Anne, you and my grandmothers have walked through fire for us to be here. What does it mean to survive, to live on, to continue and to live to tell the tale? What does the weight of survival entail? What responsibilities and scaled memories scratch the surface?
Lately, I can’t sleep. Anne, I feel as if you are pulling on my knees. I toss and I turn. I have one hand rooted to our past, vines of my culture rising through my skin. The other hand is burying my culture under bricks of shame, sweeping parts of myself under the rug. Every Friday night I think about lighting the candles, scoring the match to illuminate the delicate hands of my grandmother, and bringing in the heat with my own hands. All of this stirring in me and at the same time I’ve never been so ashamed of my Judaism. I’ve never wanted to reject something so fully, so deeply and whole. I’ve never wanted to tear out a layer of my skin and dump it into the sea. Our religion is tied up in knots Anne, tight knots strung to the very thing we ran away from. I don’t want to wear my star of David anymore Anne. I will not. There are Jews that have twisted that star and pierced it into the blood bath of Israel. Our pain from our/your pasts have been co-opted Anne. Memories of gas chambers and piles of bodies have been occupied. Our anger of the past has shifted into the occupation of another people. Our suffering has poured like hot wax onto the land of another people. I write this Anne and I want to hold onto to humanity with my teeth. Why do I unfairly expect that those that suffer would be exempt from wounding others? I am being bold writing this Anne. I want to tell the world or at least someone in my family that you were confined Anne. You were limited and cramped in that attic. Your little hands curbed to the confines of a hatred clashing society. I want to show my people that Palestinians are confined as you were confined, that they, children your age, are afraid as you were afraid and they are forced into hiding as you were. ADD Here are the complexities, here is history unfolded, remolded, reframed and mirrored. I think about Israel all the time. I think about ‘our’ people and I know that if I reject my Judaism than it is because those Jews that turn their pain into power have won. Those Zionists with zeal, a lust to penetrate land that is not theirs, a need to belittle and deny the existence of a people. They want to talk for me, for you Anne for all of ‘us’. They want to dangle and hang a flag over our pupils. The Palestinians are victims of victim’s Anne. Our people are murdered murderers. Israel is a state built on baggage and un-dealt memory.
Are you there Anne? I wonder what you would think now. What would you think of the state of the world we live? Have things gotten better or worse Anne? Would we love each other Anne? Would we braid each others hair and whisper secrets in the dark? We would take long walks and find spots to sweep our pains over paper reminding ourselves how alive we are. Would we disagree? Would you wrestle me in the mud with your fervor for Israel? Anne, as I write this, I’m fearful. I’m scared my people hate me. I’m an outcast and I want to hide under the desk. I want to believe in god Anne. I want to believe that beneath the concrete there lays hope. I want to believe in god Anne as I’m sure you wanted to believe. Closed up, drawn in like a tight curtain- did you want to believe in god?
I’m scared Anne. I’m troubled by of what our people have become. How could I lump us all together. We’re putting people in misery Anne. We’re stripping people at checkpoints Anne. I’m alarmed. I’m scared our people have become mirrors of old demons. I’m afraid our people have become a rifle sitting on the fence between cocky and insecure. So many youth our age Anne. So many soft skin Jews plucking the earth with their military boots, shoving their innocence under the dirt.
Today I dreamt of my grandma. Even with six hours away in Montreal, I can feel her looking at me. She hates me Anne. She hates me in that kind of deep loving way. She tries to hide her disappointment with silence, but some sounds break through. Anne, I have to tell you something Anne I have secrets. Some secrets are deep, pulled out from my own attic. Here I am Anne, feeling overwhelmed, feeling a rumble beneath my skin, feeling words that I want to hand to you on a glass plate. Words are trying to climb the ladder of me. Anne, I’m gay. I want to dip those words in honey. I want to peel those words to the core. I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about my grandmother. I keep keep holding that look in her eye when I came out to her. I see her, she is trailing a tree. I see her legs are heavy, held onto vines and layers of dreams rupturing. I have so many words i want to give to you Anne. Feed you with my naked fingertips. I’ve got so many words brewing. I need to be stirred. I feel so numb and yet so open like a walking open gash. I want to be a child again today. I want to make snow angels, have red cheeks and eat cookies before bed. My grandmother’s eyes are tombstones, half buried, half revealed, half beautiful, half terrifying, half still and always moving. I can’t find the words to give to you. I've got words forming in bubbles, left in the canals of Venice, wiped across my grandma's kitchen table, carved in the wrinkles of her skin, collaborating between my pores. My words need to be kissed, to be pushed, to be questioned. I have words that want to sleep and words that want to feel the air while tobogganing down the snow. Words, words- they die in my mouth, they mark scars. They are buried in the earth. My words are lost in Beethoven’s music. My words bleed from my lips. Press at my gut. My words are a drunken man lost on his way home. My words are grandma's tears filling the house. My words have me tied up. Have me pulled by the hair. My words are in a lighthouse by the sea. My words my words.
Dear Anne, You’re famous. Everybody knows who you are. Sometimes I wonder how much has been edited from your book. Your words are so neutral and lacking of anger or fury in your writing. Your words are exasperated or left tired for bed. Your words are ripe and whole and ready to be plucked from a tree. Who is scared of your anger Anne? Who is scared of the anger of young girls? They’re scared that we hide our rifles under our stockings, behind the lollipops in our mouths. Who is trying to edit us out Anne? Who is trying to sit on our anger? I want your hands to bleed when you punch the attic walls. I want you to have a woman to hold up in the attic. I want you to wash in the breath of a woman’s skin. I will not edit your anger Anne. I want to publish the muffled voices of those girls that are not heard. There are so many attics Anne, so many young faces, mouths full from words piled up. So many attics with those that have their words sat on. Palestinian girls with small hands cover their words each night. Palestinian girls that fold their words, iron them and leave to dry alone.
Dear Anne, I look like you with my old soul bright eyes and at this moment I need your dark brown hair reflecting off of mine. Here is my diary to you. Please write back.
The other night I finished your diary. I found the unedited version including your thoughts on sex and sexuality that your father left out of the first published version of your diary. I flipped your pages close to my heart as if I was reading my own diary, as if I didn’t want anyone to see your secrets or mine between the lines. Anne, I think you may be following me or I may be following you. I’m thinking about you. I think your eyes may be brushing the inside of my skin. I remember when I was alone in Paris . I was outside reading your words, my back leaning up against a random wall. I stood up, your thoughts still swelling on the tip of my tongue. I turned around and I had been leaning on 'the Anne frank' high school. Then days later I was in a cozy English bookstore in the heart of Paris. Couches and old books piled everywhere. I found an inviting couch to rest my legs and read your book. While turning your page, out of the corner of my eye, I see your face. Pictures of you were taped all over the wall and I realize I was sitting in the 'Anne frank ' corner of the bookstore without knowing it. Your eyes keep jumping out at me.
I think we would have been friends Anne. I think we would have gotten along and could have laughed away our pains together. I want to fold you in my arms Anne. I want to comb your hair and tell you how pretty you are. How your eyes scream aliveness. I want to drink tea and complain about our mothers. I want to break the window of the attic and take you outside. I want to stop the sound of guns and airplanes. I want to run you a hot bath and put candy in your mouth. I want to buy you a million pens so you can write forever. I want to give you some privacy, share my favorite books with you. I want to light Shabbat candles with you and let the candles flicker with our dreams. I want to burn the yellow stars in a big pile and stomp them with your shoes. Anne, I’m mourning for you in a way that I’ve never mourned before. I don’t know you, I’ve never seen the shape of your face, and I’ve never seen you walk or shift your eyes. I’ve only read your diary. Each word pressed under my gut, a pile of rocks sitting in my stomach. Anne, I think I love you. Yesterday, somebody, out of the blue told me that I look like you.
I can’t sleep Anne. I’m lying on a pile of contradictions.CONCRETE I’m propped up against complexities and I need to talk with you. I can’t sleep Anne. I seem to have swallowed a lion, choked on my religion, and gotten my hands stuck in the muddy waters of our people’s paradox. Lately, I feel this push and pull so fiercely. On the one hand, I’ve never felt this connected to my religion, to our religion. I feel as if my hands are rubbing against the Torah, my ankles are tied to ancient scripts and Talmudic lettering. Anne, there are songs under my breath that have been sung for thousands and thousands of years. Songs that were born under the earth, flickered from the hands of god. Anne, I don’t believe in god but I believe that her hands gave us those songs so that this scatteredness, this mass fraction, this thing we call Diaspora, this sense of homelessness and home could find common ground, common sound, common song. I have this opening of memories lately that brings me home. I remember coming up to my grandmother’s knees and watching her light the Friday night candles. She would bow her head, bring the heat close to her face with her hands, and with a sense of calm urgency she recited a prayer. I remember the prayer even though I haven’t recited it in over ten years. I guess that’s the power of religion or tradition that a prayer ten years past can still hang firmly in the closet of my most inner walls. I want to wrap my hands along the contours of my Judaism. I want to sing around the Seder table with you Anne. I want to dip bread and honey and spark candles for the future. There is a sense of justice in our culture, a sense of humanity in our traditions. Humanity is the color of my grandmother’s eyes. There is a door left open ajar at all times- a reminder that we are still here, that we have survived, that we can wear the Star of David not as a marker of murder and degradation but as a symbol that we have survived. Anne, you and my grandmothers have walked through fire for us to be here. What does it mean to survive, to live on, to continue and to live to tell the tale? What does the weight of survival entail? What responsibilities and scaled memories scratch the surface?
Lately, I can’t sleep. Anne, I feel as if you are pulling on my knees. I toss and I turn. I have one hand rooted to our past, vines of my culture rising through my skin. The other hand is burying my culture under bricks of shame, sweeping parts of myself under the rug. Every Friday night I think about lighting the candles, scoring the match to illuminate the delicate hands of my grandmother, and bringing in the heat with my own hands. All of this stirring in me and at the same time I’ve never been so ashamed of my Judaism. I’ve never wanted to reject something so fully, so deeply and whole. I’ve never wanted to tear out a layer of my skin and dump it into the sea. Our religion is tied up in knots Anne, tight knots strung to the very thing we ran away from. I don’t want to wear my star of David anymore Anne. I will not. There are Jews that have twisted that star and pierced it into the blood bath of Israel. Our pain from our/your pasts have been co-opted Anne. Memories of gas chambers and piles of bodies have been occupied. Our anger of the past has shifted into the occupation of another people. Our suffering has poured like hot wax onto the land of another people. I write this Anne and I want to hold onto to humanity with my teeth. Why do I unfairly expect that those that suffer would be exempt from wounding others? I am being bold writing this Anne. I want to tell the world or at least someone in my family that you were confined Anne. You were limited and cramped in that attic. Your little hands curbed to the confines of a hatred clashing society. I want to show my people that Palestinians are confined as you were confined, that they, children your age, are afraid as you were afraid and they are forced into hiding as you were. ADD Here are the complexities, here is history unfolded, remolded, reframed and mirrored. I think about Israel all the time. I think about ‘our’ people and I know that if I reject my Judaism than it is because those Jews that turn their pain into power have won. Those Zionists with zeal, a lust to penetrate land that is not theirs, a need to belittle and deny the existence of a people. They want to talk for me, for you Anne for all of ‘us’. They want to dangle and hang a flag over our pupils. The Palestinians are victims of victim’s Anne. Our people are murdered murderers. Israel is a state built on baggage and un-dealt memory.
Are you there Anne? I wonder what you would think now. What would you think of the state of the world we live? Have things gotten better or worse Anne? Would we love each other Anne? Would we braid each others hair and whisper secrets in the dark? We would take long walks and find spots to sweep our pains over paper reminding ourselves how alive we are. Would we disagree? Would you wrestle me in the mud with your fervor for Israel? Anne, as I write this, I’m fearful. I’m scared my people hate me. I’m an outcast and I want to hide under the desk. I want to believe in god Anne. I want to believe that beneath the concrete there lays hope. I want to believe in god Anne as I’m sure you wanted to believe. Closed up, drawn in like a tight curtain- did you want to believe in god?
I’m scared Anne. I’m troubled by of what our people have become. How could I lump us all together. We’re putting people in misery Anne. We’re stripping people at checkpoints Anne. I’m alarmed. I’m scared our people have become mirrors of old demons. I’m afraid our people have become a rifle sitting on the fence between cocky and insecure. So many youth our age Anne. So many soft skin Jews plucking the earth with their military boots, shoving their innocence under the dirt.
Today I dreamt of my grandma. Even with six hours away in Montreal, I can feel her looking at me. She hates me Anne. She hates me in that kind of deep loving way. She tries to hide her disappointment with silence, but some sounds break through. Anne, I have to tell you something Anne I have secrets. Some secrets are deep, pulled out from my own attic. Here I am Anne, feeling overwhelmed, feeling a rumble beneath my skin, feeling words that I want to hand to you on a glass plate. Words are trying to climb the ladder of me. Anne, I’m gay. I want to dip those words in honey. I want to peel those words to the core. I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about my grandmother. I keep keep holding that look in her eye when I came out to her. I see her, she is trailing a tree. I see her legs are heavy, held onto vines and layers of dreams rupturing. I have so many words i want to give to you Anne. Feed you with my naked fingertips. I’ve got so many words brewing. I need to be stirred. I feel so numb and yet so open like a walking open gash. I want to be a child again today. I want to make snow angels, have red cheeks and eat cookies before bed. My grandmother’s eyes are tombstones, half buried, half revealed, half beautiful, half terrifying, half still and always moving. I can’t find the words to give to you. I've got words forming in bubbles, left in the canals of Venice, wiped across my grandma's kitchen table, carved in the wrinkles of her skin, collaborating between my pores. My words need to be kissed, to be pushed, to be questioned. I have words that want to sleep and words that want to feel the air while tobogganing down the snow. Words, words- they die in my mouth, they mark scars. They are buried in the earth. My words are lost in Beethoven’s music. My words bleed from my lips. Press at my gut. My words are a drunken man lost on his way home. My words are grandma's tears filling the house. My words have me tied up. Have me pulled by the hair. My words are in a lighthouse by the sea. My words my words.
Dear Anne, You’re famous. Everybody knows who you are. Sometimes I wonder how much has been edited from your book. Your words are so neutral and lacking of anger or fury in your writing. Your words are exasperated or left tired for bed. Your words are ripe and whole and ready to be plucked from a tree. Who is scared of your anger Anne? Who is scared of the anger of young girls? They’re scared that we hide our rifles under our stockings, behind the lollipops in our mouths. Who is trying to edit us out Anne? Who is trying to sit on our anger? I want your hands to bleed when you punch the attic walls. I want you to have a woman to hold up in the attic. I want you to wash in the breath of a woman’s skin. I will not edit your anger Anne. I want to publish the muffled voices of those girls that are not heard. There are so many attics Anne, so many young faces, mouths full from words piled up. So many attics with those that have their words sat on. Palestinian girls with small hands cover their words each night. Palestinian girls that fold their words, iron them and leave to dry alone.
Dear Anne, I look like you with my old soul bright eyes and at this moment I need your dark brown hair reflecting off of mine. Here is my diary to you. Please write back.