Hesped

The candy in your hand

Tasted of sunbursts dragged from deep beneath a tallis,

Of lime lingering in the lint,

Of forays across the mechitzah,

Of fearless childhood darting through its realm

To receive its rightful due.

The orange lozenge on your palm was each time

Traded for an unpleasantly wet kiss

(But one can excuse a Holocaust survivor many things),

And an update on our affairs of state.

I sucked on lemon and

Yiddish words fell away from

The sweet.

I unpeeled them from our conversation

And left them on the floor with my wrapper.

Cutting my tongue on a crack in the candy,

Savoring the blood and the sugar together,

I licked the wound again and again,

Ear half-cocked to eavesdrop on your stories of Auschwitz.

Bashful, blushing, beckoned to stretch across the mechitzah,

Where we sat directly opposite from you so our prayers

Could ride piggyback on yours straight to heaven

(Because my ima said G-d can deny you nothing),

I grasped the candy with all the gracelessness of a teenager

Who doesn’t want to break boundaries,

Still pleased you’d called me from the ranks of flirtatious kibbitzing

The women gave you as your due,

And thanked you from my awkward heart.

Rumor has it you reached one hundred years,

And two,

But nobody really knows—

The shul feels rather that you have earned one hundred,

Than any certainty that it’s countable.

You gilded our childhoods with honey

Against the trauma of growing up.

Nu, already.

We should be grown.

But the bite of hard candy revives you in our prayers.