KOL NIDRE: ALL MY VOWS

All My Vows: Kol Nidre

It’s possible to love your enemies,

to love them precisely, innocently and

with a whole heart: Monica had two braids.

In my imagination one is as chestnut as a chestnut,

and the second threaded with silver strands.

But you all already know

how she cried for me

endlessly

and I only asked for a single cilium, an eyelash

to cull in the morning. That morning. When you smiled.

God doesn’t have braids like Monica’s, but

our missiles really, really resemble

the pieces of stone I used to shatter my neighbor’s windshields.

Is it worth it to once

harm even the eyebrow of a child? Be damned!

Ahhhh, even your love is cursed.

If you could just shatter that single window

and open the wide and sky sight

through which my dead observe my life.

This poem first appeared in The LA Review