Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Six Women Washing
We are six women washing:
One the rabbi (also pregnant),
One the daughter-in law,
One an accordion player, a shock of purple in her hair,
One with a long dark braid,
One eleven, her daughter,
One a member of the Raging Grannies.
How many times have we washed -
the clothes
the dishes
the children's shining bodies…
The common motion of cherishing skin and soul.
We dip our sponges
wash her body;
the body she does not need now.
This common motion comforting;
First the right side, then the left, then the right again.
The skin on the shin soft and cold
The blue tattoo of numbers on the left wrist
The back bruising purple
The crush of the weight of the world now ascended.
We wash
the body she was born into
the body she has passed out of.
We constellate her history,
the family whose cell story she carried.
Her first marriage lived by the Baltic
with a man who cherished her as we do.
And then he did, but she did not, die
a death chosen by some camp guard.
Her second marriage brought the man I married into the world.
All the rest, before and after.
With water we usher the soul through the topic of the body.
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