Obituary

Obituary/edna aphek

Forgive me for entering without knocking
Sitting inside you for weeks.
It rained so heavily outside,
Her panties on the heater.
You said:
"Exit on the right
As I went down the stairs
I heard laughter

Every morning while reading the paper and sipping at my black, never with milk, coffee, I look for the obituaries. It reminds me of my being alive. From time to time I meet people I know. Yesterday I ran into you.
For years I have been thinking what it would be like when I meet you .
"newspapers addict you called me in one of our three meetings.
It was by leafing through the newspaper that I learnt of your untimely death.
The airline and travel companies wrote beautiful obituaries for even when we met, you were rich and famous.

You asked for Ahuva "wrong number I said. "It's not Ahuva, but let's talk.
We talked and talked and talked.
And when he came back home and hit me as he used to, just for fun, I was thinking about you and the warmth in your voice. I wondered whether the same warmth would be flowing from your hands. So I rang and you answered. And you came in your convertible. Jerusalem in December is very cold.
I bought a woolen coat with a fur collar. Two years of savings coated the coat. We talked and talked and drove around.
You kissed me once, and this kiss has been with me until yesterday, when you died.
You said : you are so very pretty.
All that time, while we were in your car, he was standing at the window, crying. He didn't know that I wasn't his anymore, as I had never been.
His tears ran into the rain and interlaced with the beauty of the drops.
When my coat went up the stairs, he waited for me, at the top.
Kiryat yovel, third floor, 25 cubic meters.
You were living at the time, on Harlap Street in a five room apartment.
He forced himself on me, but I was yours and cried. No one knew for I had no tears.
On that night I went to you on foot all the way from the Hebrew U. It was raining and windy and the wind blew away my umbrella. I went up on Rupin Street and from there to Rehavia and then to the Arie Street and from there to Harlap.
I was soaked in the Jerusalemite cold of December and pure beloved rain.

And I loved you while walking towards you.
I knocked at the door and you opened stupefied and behind you she stood and her panties on the heater.
You whispered: not now, "it's highly inconvenient and called a taxi for which I paid one week's salary.
He was waiting for me as he would for years until his waiting reservoirs would go dry and he found himself another woman.
A towel in his hand and a hot shower waiting. And I was waiting for you.
Next morning I left .
Remember the Reich pension in Beit Hakerem?
Years later he told me that he contacted you and scared you off.
He told you I used to seduce men and then to blackmail them.
And you believed him.
On the morning you were to come to my room at the pension I soaked myself for hours in the tub and put on the blue suit which my mother's seamstress, made for me from a suit of my dead father. I had my hair braided like those beautiful Slavic women would and you came, with a friend.
"You are very sick, you said. "Go back to your husband, for he loves you.
I didn't know that you two had met and nor that he told you.
I knelt before you and held on to your feet as one who knew her future and asked that you would not .
You shook your legs away from my hands as one who hadn't found a towel, and left.
"don't you ever call me again, you said.
"You were my puppet, my marionette ", he wrote when I left him again.
And I didn't know he wasn't lying this time.
The morning after I called you and you said: I told you never to call me again.
I went back.
Children were born who could have been yours, and there were moments of happiness and hope that could have been yours, and there were hatred and jealousy and rancor that could have been yours.
I went back and called out your name and you never knew .
And the moment came when I saw your name in the paper and what I just wrote I wrote
in memoriam.

Drops were hanging between me and the air
Drops of what once was love
It never dries up like water
Nor comes back like rain
Rather evaporates slowly
Poisonous gas.

והיא שאינה מתאדה כמים
ואף לא
חוזרת
כגשם
מתעדה לעיתה
גז מרעיל.