Page 37 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

minute, leaving me to wander through Afula in search of hummus-and-tahini-in-pita-bread ther- apy. If so, I’d just catch a bus back to the ghost.
Maybe, like Flaubert, she longed for perfection. Despite reality that insisted on being wabi-sabi, the Japanese conception of beauty as a worn and empty bowl.
What was she waiting for? Was she waiting for her husband who’d left to defend Israel? Maybe he’d never come back. Did she know he was dead? Did she know she was dead? Did a ghost know when it was a ghost? Waiting for someone or something that would never return? Maybe she was waiting for world peace. Perhaps she was like Israel: the Holocaust had killed one-third of the world’s Jews; and even now Israel was sur- rounded by countries vying for gold in the In- tolerance Olympics. Yet Israel’s national anthem continued to be Hatikva, The Hope.
In the half-hour walk from where the bus would leave me off, I would focus, try to gather together all my broken little pieces, which were like the an- cient pottery shards I collected when I wandered in the fields. I would move through the darkness to the place where I live. To the woman at the window. Who waits.
Note: this is a work of ction.
Friedman, a writer living in Israel, earned her MFA in ction from Columbia University, NY. She and has won several awards including an “Exceptional Talent” grant from the Israeli Ministry of Culture.
Mind my Other Minds
oil on canvas
49'' x 77''
By Rebecca Brodskis
28