my first yom kippur--

in israel was a covid year,

2020 i think, back when

you had to quarantine for

two weeks, we came to see

my son, my poor teenage

daughter and i stuck together

in a glass apartment that

collected noise and sunlight,

and looking back now

i’m surprised we didn’t

kill each other, or go mad

or both, she had the nearly

windowless bomb shelter for a

bedroom and i had the one

in the back with a bathtub

it was too hot to use, the

apartment drenched in grey—

walls, floor, appliances and

the couch we lived on, like we

lived on ordered in food,

because we were ordered not

to leave, the government is

watching, they said at the airport,

after we gave them our

phone numbers and promised

not to leave the house for

exactly two weeks to the

hour, even to empty

the trash, the landlord

said on the phone, the people

in the building are afraid

you’ll make them sick, i don’t

remember what we did

with the trash, but i

do remember coffee

on the balcony and

construction crews drilling

before 4am and walking

back and forth and back

and forth down the long

corridor, and i remember

that when the two weeks

was up, it was yom kippur,

and to the exact second we

unlocked the door and

ran downstairs with baby eyes

having not really seen

the sky or breathed the air

or smelled or seen anything

but each other for two whole

weeks and we cried because now

we were free, to roam on

streets without cars with

people all dressed in white

and families and children

and babies up all night

and we walked straight to

the sea and said our own

little prayers on that first

yom kippur during covid

on streets filled with white