Visits

Quiet in My Head – War | 8.11.2023

When you’re not here, my head is quiet. So quiet that a song starts playing in my head. I hear it clearly. I go and put it on the speaker and start singing. It’s so quiet when you’re not here.

I am here, I exist, I carry on. I take out the trash and work in the garden. I go to work and do the shopping. I take the dogs out and make sure to fill all the roles—educating when needed, and also petting, playing, hugging, and sleeping together. I am all the roles. I wash the dishes and put on the laundry. I do the everyday tasks and also special projects of bleach in the sink that maybe you like.

I remember to water the plants. Sometimes I forget to turn off the water.

I rake leaves and recycle.

I take the car to the garage to fix the brakes (they replaced our pads; I didn’t check what that means but I can imagine).

I read the news because you’re too busy to tell me what’s happening—or because things are happening all the time, so I have to keep myself updated, otherwise we won’t keep up.

At night I read a book, a story about betrayal. Something that normally might intrigue me and awaken some creativity, the imagination. But my heart finds no connection to those sides of me now—blocked. I’m not playful right now, not very creative or funny either, as if I’ve sworn to put on a mask of sadness and not remove it until you return. Heavy.

I only long. I can only talk or think about great love—others’ too, but mostly ours—and give thanks and pray to some god or great energy: thank you that you plan to come back from there. Thank you that you are wise and changed roles a few years ago when you understood you were already too sensitive, that you had been through enough. Thank you that you are not entering Gaza. Forgive me, all of you who are. I see your pictures on Ynet and ask your forgiveness that you have to do this. I’m sorry. I hope you also plan to come back. Please.

It’s already been a month. A month, like my cycle. Like other things, it has sadness in it, withdrawal, togetherness, aloneness, movement, sharing, paralysis, great silence and quiet.

Quiet in my head, quiet in the house. Quiet in many homes, and many homes without it—without quiet and without people. People without a home, people without people.

Your absence is understood.

Come back.
Come back, all of you.
Let it end.
Finish already.
So we can begin to rebuild and to hug and to clean and to think differently and not let go of each other’s hands.

Caressed, curled up like two puppies, head to head, head to shoulder, nose to mouth, mouth to neck.

May there always be a point of contact, that the warmth will pass and flow from me to you, from you to me, from me to you, from you to me—and outward, so that maybe we can warm a few more people.