footnotes

It started when I began to light candles.

I knew that their light was too familiar.

The flame seemed ancient but also my child.

I was told a story about medieval sage.

Isaac Luria has traced the lineage of the flame.

I imagine him trying to sew each weary candle into the sun.

How many individual flames are in the sun?

Sometimes I can feel other lives through my own.

Sometimes I know there has never been any other.

How can I be we and also I at the same time?

Whose flame is this that I remember?

Why is this heat sometimes covered in shadow?

Who is making this shade?

The world is at once burning and freezing.

The world is floating in space.

Where does space come from?

Who has been carved?

Then your town was radioed in.

Your rural town with its apples.

Your rural town with its clean skin.

I could hear you like I could hear the flame.

You sometimes were the living cells.

And sang together from one throat.

But you also sometimes were banished from each other.

You sometimes were lost in your freedom.

I heard your children laughing.

I heard your fathers breaking.

I could see your town sparkling.

You are wolves and you are the rain.

You are tiny and you are insufferable.

You are somewhere where America is good.

And I have fallen in love with you.

Because you are far away.

Because you are embedded into me.

Like a blade.

As the sun is warming us with its infinite knives.

The sun is a stomach which is fed by us.

I hear you now when I sing for my bread.

When I light candles now I am embracing you.

This light is broken

This light is in us all

We must keep sewing

We must keep sewing

We must keep sewing