RoseTintMyWorld

Five ways to tell the time in the room, ten more, or more in all the others: so many clocks this tiny apartment teems with time's procession, its corridors unsparing, large enough only for one. Five ways to tell the time and only I'm awake to see— four lights to switch and darken all the rooms, the kitchen, the hallway as I drift pad-footed over hardwood and linoleum. Everything's too quiet so I fill the room with noise as if running scalding water to fill a room with steam. I bring the sounds, to clear me to decongest. To make the harsh air a little softer on my aching throat, straining laden lungs. To shift the weig

"But, of course, the Gemara itself says that learning Gemara is a masculine activity. Right there in Sota: "Teaching your daughter Gemara is like teaching her trifles". Women aren't included in Gemara-learning, never have been, just as they aren't included in the Minyan. It isn't the Jewish way. Nu, does a woman wear tzitzit or tefilin? The Rishonim knew what they were doing, when they set up those rules, and Hashem knew what He was doing when He guided them. Who in the world do these women think they are, trying to replace traditions thousands of years older than them? It's not a woman's place to be learning Gemara. None of those women are s

I never told this to anyone. I saw it all through a window.  I wasn't eavesdropping or anything. I was simply walking in the garden, in broad daylight. No one saw me standing there. It was Saturday, and the back window on the Morgan house faced out on the narrow strip of rock-riddled green between the house and the dividing fence, its grasses untended and grown long, riddled with flowering weeds. I'd often come through there, ducking in that tall grass, which reached as high as my navel. I'd dig up rocks and take them home to wash and polish and set on my windowsill. The Morgan house was tall, three stories stacked narrowly up. Its timber w

The dust was everywhere, in the air, in the sounds it carried, making them slow and faraway, like they were covered in cotton. But we all pricked our ears, and the hot iron of our fear seemed to slice through the dust and bring the small sounds closer to us. We had to listen, because they would be listening. They were coming for us. All of us there, running and crouching, running and crouching. All around us the smell of our sweat and the sun baking the earth. The distant glint of metal on the horizon and the rising dust cloud let us know they were close and coming closer. We'd been told they would be here but hoped that they wouldn't, someh

As the train made its good, gaining motions out to where all the windows pressed against was black, Eugenie settled into her seat, still buckled and buttoned into her wool coat, still gloved. She noticed that the lights in her car, which had been so warm and welcoming when she had first stepped inside from the cold of the station, had taken on a glaring tone, a fluorescence that began to jar against her eyes, throbbing. She noticed a headache, of course, another. Better catch this one 'fore it creeps, she thought. She roused her heavy-fabric traveling bag up from the floor between her feet and rummaged around in its depths for the Aspirin. Wh

Whose voice is your voice you product of years you patchwork men: whose voice, whose hand If to see David is to see a slice of earth composites of years, layers of rock accumulated over time dust hardening to stone If the arch of your shoulder comes from one man, and the supple milk of your song from another, whose voice is your voice, where does the fault line end, and the man begin? Or are you made entirely of space-between, composite creature, is the David who swirls into being jabbing elbows and tensing neck in my mind's eye, so clearly breath and skin and sweat a stasis formed from static the breath of many ree

The baby was dead before they got to the hospital. The paramedics knew it and the ambulance ride was slow despite the sirens. When they had gotten to the house, Rachel was unable to move, but wasn't crying. One of them took Henry from where she was holding him against her chest. The other had put two small, white pills in her hand. Rachel lifted them to her mouth slowly, her arm moving through the air as if it was underwater. In the cab of the ambulance, she felt strongly the sensation of moving and standing still at once. They had put Henry's tiny body on a gurney made especially for children, but still ten times his size. There were two pa

Little sore tender thing, I would not see your face in me. For nine weeks I would cast my eyes count backward through months, deny you, tumbling bean, in your steaming bog whose clock chime was my heartbeat. When finally you could no longer be denied I would not name you. I would not think of your face. I was too afraid of the softness of your skin your toothless maw, your cat's cry your sour milky smell, your pulse. Little clot, composed of dust, mud, clocks humming softly, you took form, from particles whirling: pomegranate seeds, sweat smelling of limes, engines combusting, low roars underfoot in the car. Books and

suns rise and set beyond the north wall our fevered, fitful sleep spattering day and night like clouds breaking. we wake sore-eyed shrinking from harsh light, rattling lungs the hollow room. Our bodies and the house fall steadily into disrepair around us. We watch from the window. Our creaking limbs buckle as we rise, unsure our dimensions in this stagnant space like dull moss. Light sears and we drop old handkerchiefs on all the lamps turn their high whine to a whisper. The carpet is filthy. We are hungry. We can feel it in our throats We barely speak. Silence fills the room like rushing water. We kneel and take our daily brea

on his knees, in the clearing he knelt his head, sun beating beneath its weight, his neck wrinkled and freckling in the distance the roar the frightened mass, balls of their eyes rolling wet in hollowed sockets. he had cast himself out a space apart, to sing a standing, certain faith with tense shoulders, paced breath but his voice wavered, words slowed turned to mud on his tongue thickened with lisp. from his gut welled a fear growing like tides, the coarseness of sand on his fingers he knew through the word that one exile could not replace another so he fell down on his face body shaking on the flat earth taken up in