Fringes

 

The caramel-scented spiral

from your pipe would form

a ghostly thunderhead

in the cold tile study

to which you’d summoned me,

your disobedient one.

 

That sweet smell and

queasy dread blurred into

what I knew—

what I would always know—

as love.

 

In synagogue, your satin tallis

brushed against my arm as we

dutifully rose and sat, rose and sat,

sometimes for so long

you snored, your furious breath

 

fumes impossible to ignore so

I took a fist of your tallis with its

long silky threads and held it to my nose,

a guilty reprieve, until

it was time again to stand.

 

Years later, we confided about

those tedious hours spent

in adherence to a tradition we both

loved and misunderstood,

the way we also loved and misunderstood each other

 

the way a tallis was never meant to be shared.