burnt

Burnt

Now I know, I know. I know that I can sit with this burn. 
My mouth is blood, my teeth are flame. I will drink 
glass after glass of mezcal, until the spirits take me. 
Yesterday at lunch they gave us a dessert of thin
white wafers, burnt sugar sandwiched in between. 
I felt burnt when someone told me what they were,
and then surprised I hadn’t seen. But what do I know
of that many-faced god and all his pomp and glow?
I was given only one God, who speaks in riddles, 
burns. I am that I am, I said to a friend late
last night, putting myself to bed in bad spirits, 
chasing wrong turns. The fireworks go all day and night, 
celebrating a saint. Once I visited the tomb of a tzaddik,
but that world was burnt, there are no spirits now in sight.
When I go to shul the singing is a weight.
The Sabbath Queen has been put to the stake.
I remember Friday nights, after the blessings,
watching the week burn away. And now my god
has nothing left to say. This year on Yom Kippur I 
marked the day with sin, so as not to be written in 
the book of life. All that month, balanced on a knife, 
more fireworks, strife. I know that I can sit with this burn.
I have had many years to learn. I burn, but I am not 
consumed, and I do not need your saints, entombed. 
A great miracle happened here. The light returns,
and fortified with spirits I go back to my room.

— amy isikoff newell