the breeze blown veil

In the iciness of imagined aloneness

My cousin lays in a hospital room

Feeling with 75-100% certainty

That it is a concentration camp 

Disguised as a hospital

And she is going to die there

At the hands of those who hate her.

She is there recovering from back surgery

The pain meds and a persistent TBI and the mysteries of the psyche

Spin her through the shoots and ladders of surreality.

She is inheriting the terror of her ancestors.

She is living out the persecution she fears

And she says she’d rather end life herself 

Than let it be stolen in a waking nightmare.

The last time we spoke she told me 

The bombing is necessary.

Without it all Jews will die

Keep the bombing, keep it

Keep the shooting and the torture

So that what was before cannot be again.

So I didn’t speak to her for a year.

She doesn’t want visitors and she doesn’t want phone calls

So I’m asked to write to her, to paint her a card

And tell her she isn’t alone.

I’ll do it I will I might even try to say

There’s no denying the veil is thin.

What is real what is imagined are twisted together 

On a soft serve cone and handed through a little window

To each of us lined down the block.

What feels sure, a reality unburdened by paranoia and fear

Is sometimes a performance incepted by the 

Columns of men and enacted by our yearning brains.

So when the hypervigilant daymares touch down on the doorstep

Who am I to say snap out of it.

I live in the breeze blown veil, too.

Its softness wisps along my cheek as I try to peer between

The two worlds sometimes deliberately stepping beyond.

I am here, but I might be in a hospital bed filled with horror.

I am striding in the city on my drugs for my party,

But I could be on the pavement.

What tethers me to my willful dance with the veil - 

What is it that keeps me from helium rising off the ground

And setting out unmoored across the metaverse 

To join my ancestors in their suffering -

Can I bottle it up and mail it to the hospital in Minnesota -

Can I spell it out in a letter and insist the steps are followed

Until her feet land firmly back on the ground -

Can I offer my love as a surefire cure to the fear.