Closure.

Eli, Eli.

It was 2016 and I was in France but when I came home we were going to run away. We would elope before I started English at UCLA and you ducked the draft for yeshiva and make it work this time and we wouldn’t tell anybody not our parents not friends and cousins and neighbors only God and some random priest for years. It was 2016 and you wouldn’t touch me until it was religiously ordained. 2016 and we were going to use a Catholic priest because anywhere in America anywhere in the world that we went we knew the geography would uncover us, cover us up. The maps. The lines: ley life love blood. It’s 2016 and I’m not being hurt anymore.

Not at home nor in the graveyard nor at school nor on the trains. In fact it’s been more than a year since I was being hurt. I started dating the wrong boy immediately after the hurt ended of course but you waited and waited like always. Dog at the foot of the bed. Deerhound. My dear. Well it made up for me chasing you in preschool and kindergarten and all the recesses and lunch hours. Different schools after junior high same street then same neighborhood then same city. Same state. Of mind of grace. 2016 and they’d been calling your name for the wrong army for a year, more. 2016 and it looked like a meat churner in the holy land but I was your promise.

June and I burned the names and lips of everyone who had ever touched me and showered then I called you to pick me up and you did because you always do. Did you always did, Eli. My top listener, my seashell, wound and wound and it’s only ever my own pulse echoed back at me from the pearl of you. Why didn’t you say more. Why didn’t you talk to me like that earlier. Why didn’t you make me ask the right questions. Why wait until June before I left the country again and you tried to go underground. Before they put you there.

You with your calculations and hands.

Look, I can write your name in Hebrew, I said. I put the ink on my arm. Maybe I’ll just come to school with you. I’ll stay home and cook and you can come home to me and your gin martini and tell me about God and all. And you raise your stupid eyebrow and laugh and laugh because Rhi you would go insane. Cooking’s good but the desert would eat you alive. LA girl. Soft little Amerikatsya.

Hit your arm and you don’t blink, beat, now you wince all theatrically. Like you’d been. Shot. I am tough, so so tough.

I know Krav Maga too, fool. I grip the hair at the base of your head, tug. I could beat you. You’d let me win.

Yeah, I know Bridget had you take it before she’d let you on Metro, you say. Grimacing for me, for the stars, God, angels, anybody else watching. But you can’t slap away bullets, baby. You’d never be able to shut yourself up fast enough.

Then why are you going.

So I can tan. I pull harder. Because I miss Bubbe. Hard. Real tears now. Damn you. I miss real falafel. Tafsik, Rhi. You know I have no choice.

Calligraphy pen looped, bleeding into my skin all damp with sweat and coconut lotion and thoughts of. You. Mrs. Eli Cohen. Mrs. EEC. Mrs. Rhiannon Lazarus Cohen. June and we are on the Mulholland Drive overlook and the city below is all stars and fireworks and kitchen lights. We sit on the hood of your dad’s old Chevy in a cloud of fireflies, embers, birthday wishes. I’m a strong woman and all (I think at eighteen, eighteen I was, you a year ahead, year and a week ahead of me, Eli) but I would take his name. I hate my family names. I want to be in his family. I want him.

Your name on my arm and in my mouth. My body in your arms and in your mouth. Why only then, why wait.

Why kiss me so, so much tonight and no other night. Why press my palms, pulse to your mouth now, bite my fingertips, my shoulder. Why now, to lie back, my stargazer, to recline with me here in the dirt of our half-evil city of angels. Why that night and not another night, boy. Why are you crying.

Did you know, even then? Your calculations, your hands. Did you look at me and see a clock counting down?

So you answered finally. I left the door open and the wine out and a plate full for you and you answer.

Listen, baby. Listen.

And under the sirens and traffic and party noise I hear your heart. Steady as ever. Onwards and upwards. Better days ahead.

It has been ten years since I came home to nothing and nobody and nowhere. Static. White noise. Tower card, death card, hanged man, the fool the hermit the lovers, reversed, two of cups, poured out, broken. The moon.

Shock and awe. The numb wore off Eli, wore me down and out and done. I know you can hear me. You always have. Let my tears dry, honey. Kiss me once more and close the door soft. I think we’ve had our fill.

EEC XOX RLM