Lamentation
If there be no mercy left in the world,
the gates of heaven will never be barred.
I come with my hands torn open,
the places where I kept light now caked in ash.
I bring the catalogue of small deaths:
the quiet betrayals, the names I could not save,
the nights where sleep was a ledger of loss.
I am raw. I am honest. I will not pretty this wound.
I have learned the geometry of grief --
how it maps into the ribcage, how it sits like a foreign tenant in the throat.
I have said words into the dark and heard them ricochet without echo.
Friends hand me platitudes like band-aids for a missing limb;
they call it lesson, test, providence --
and I spit back language they cannot carry: this hurt is not tidy.
Fuck the neat answers. My sorrow will not be explained away.
I have been elbow-deep in memory, digging for whatever bright thing might still be whole.
Sometimes I find a shard and it cuts my palm open all over again.
Sometimes I hold a laugh like contraband, trembling with guilt.
There are moments I want to throttle the sky, to show it what absence tastes like.
There are moments I fall to my knees, because what else is there to do but plead?
You are the One who split dawn from dark,
who taught the sea where to end and the shore where to begin.
If You are distant, then distance is a hard teacher;
if You are silent, then silence is a wall I cannot climb.
But somewhere between the thunder and my broken heart,
I hold this stubborn thread: breath.
I breathe, even when the world would have me stop.
I am not clean-mouthed with You.
I swear and I weep and I rage in the same sentence.
Hear the full weight of me — every cursed syllable, every whispered hallel,
the ugly syllables that keep me from drowning.
Do not measure me by the answers I cannot offer --
measure me by the steadiness of this return.
If mercy is scarce, let my knocking be relentless.
If hope is thin, let my knocking cut through the thinness like a blade.
Do not let the book close on me because my language is ragged.
Teach me, if You will, how to hold what remains:
the small hands that still reach, the single candle that keeps burning,
the stubbornness of morning that refuses to be erased.
Teach me how to be both furious and faithful --
to strike out at the dark and still keep the doorway lit.
I have called You by many names; I call You now by the one that remembers me.
Hear me: I curse the injustice. I bless the memory.
I howl my anger into the night and then I sit in the ash and wait.
If grace comes, let it come blunt and real.
If judgment comes, let it be fair and true.
But do not, Hashem, leave me at the edge of the cliff with no hand to take.
ה׳, קַבֵּל אֶת דִּמְעוֹתַי, אֶת הַכְּאֵב שֶׁבְּלִבִּי. אַל תַּעֲזֹב אוֹתִי בַּחֹשֶׁךְ. תֵּן לִי כּוֹחַ לַעֲמוֹד, וְנֶחָמָה לְרוּחִי.
Adonai, kabel et dim’otai, et hake’ev she-b’libi. Al ta’azov oti ba’choshech. Ten li koach la’amod, v’nechamah l’ruhi.
G-d, receive my tears, the pain within my heart. Do not abandon me in the darkness. Give me strength to stand, and comfort for my soul.
the gates of heaven will never be barred.
I come with my hands torn open,
the places where I kept light now caked in ash.
I bring the catalogue of small deaths:
the quiet betrayals, the names I could not save,
the nights where sleep was a ledger of loss.
I am raw. I am honest. I will not pretty this wound.
I have learned the geometry of grief --
how it maps into the ribcage, how it sits like a foreign tenant in the throat.
I have said words into the dark and heard them ricochet without echo.
Friends hand me platitudes like band-aids for a missing limb;
they call it lesson, test, providence --
and I spit back language they cannot carry: this hurt is not tidy.
Fuck the neat answers. My sorrow will not be explained away.
I have been elbow-deep in memory, digging for whatever bright thing might still be whole.
Sometimes I find a shard and it cuts my palm open all over again.
Sometimes I hold a laugh like contraband, trembling with guilt.
There are moments I want to throttle the sky, to show it what absence tastes like.
There are moments I fall to my knees, because what else is there to do but plead?
You are the One who split dawn from dark,
who taught the sea where to end and the shore where to begin.
If You are distant, then distance is a hard teacher;
if You are silent, then silence is a wall I cannot climb.
But somewhere between the thunder and my broken heart,
I hold this stubborn thread: breath.
I breathe, even when the world would have me stop.
I am not clean-mouthed with You.
I swear and I weep and I rage in the same sentence.
Hear the full weight of me — every cursed syllable, every whispered hallel,
the ugly syllables that keep me from drowning.
Do not measure me by the answers I cannot offer --
measure me by the steadiness of this return.
If mercy is scarce, let my knocking be relentless.
If hope is thin, let my knocking cut through the thinness like a blade.
Do not let the book close on me because my language is ragged.
Teach me, if You will, how to hold what remains:
the small hands that still reach, the single candle that keeps burning,
the stubbornness of morning that refuses to be erased.
Teach me how to be both furious and faithful --
to strike out at the dark and still keep the doorway lit.
I have called You by many names; I call You now by the one that remembers me.
Hear me: I curse the injustice. I bless the memory.
I howl my anger into the night and then I sit in the ash and wait.
If grace comes, let it come blunt and real.
If judgment comes, let it be fair and true.
But do not, Hashem, leave me at the edge of the cliff with no hand to take.
ה׳, קַבֵּל אֶת דִּמְעוֹתַי, אֶת הַכְּאֵב שֶׁבְּלִבִּי. אַל תַּעֲזֹב אוֹתִי בַּחֹשֶׁךְ. תֵּן לִי כּוֹחַ לַעֲמוֹד, וְנֶחָמָה לְרוּחִי.
Adonai, kabel et dim’otai, et hake’ev she-b’libi. Al ta’azov oti ba’choshech. Ten li koach la’amod, v’nechamah l’ruhi.
G-d, receive my tears, the pain within my heart. Do not abandon me in the darkness. Give me strength to stand, and comfort for my soul.
[September 18, 2025 after the death of Shams and an entire lifetime of trauma]
