My neighbor fixes the fall of her lilac dress one foot out
Her mom’s tooth-white minivan that idles—temporary resident
In disabled parking. The Bat Mitzvah touches down on tar in
Three-inch heels. This choreography of grown-up shoes: tentative
Heel to careful toe. Her mother’s right foot gasps
On the car brake; her daughter’s slow stilt-walk on the sidewalk tightrope
Passes the police posted at one threshold of the synagogue.
The Bat Mitzvah walks into sanctuary alone, past the unfolded table
With a trinity of wicker baskets for the expected assemblage of witnesses:
Silent bubble fidgets to busy the little ones. A well of one-use hospital
Masks for our plague age. Kippot patterned with crystal-
Encrusted gummy bears for those forgetful and those from different houses
Of different gods. She proceeds beyond the pews, to the benches staged like shoulders
Beside the ark; every underbreath a clutched recitation or hasty prayer.
Cars drizzle into the parking lot. People precipitate out.
On his way in, the Bat Mitzvah’s younger brother passes two
Bulletproof vests, two guns, two tasers, two
More policemen on duty inside. The brother grabs a kippah
Though this is his god’s house, though he is not forgetful, though his head is capped
In an aegis of royal blue. He eyes the assembly of opaque plastic bowls on standby
Stocked with candy for the celebratory catapult in the ceremony’s close. He sits.
It begins. Great walls of the aron kodesh accordion-fold behind the rabbi,
Before watchful pews. Once, the woman beside me whispers
Like an aunt recovered from the family tree, the rabbi was a steady speaker—
Booming. Since the arson threats and letters written with recreational rifles,
His voice has begun to crack. Sentence ends waver and drip into holy water.
Ahead, the Bat Mitzvah keeps her back straight though never fully turned on yet
Another cop; this one stationed at the emergency exit; an awkward imitation of stone
Imposing on five iterations of the Torah’s peace preachings. A failed shadow
In the wings while Hebrew flows like warm honey that roams, finds,
And fills the empty pockets in leavened bread. The rabbi sings
My neighbor’s praises. A teacher paints with a speech an apt image of her student:
A botanic garden welcoming the turn into spring; quince flushed with sunrise
Colors and mountain-fed irises. For their daughter, the parents sing. Unspoken:
The fleet of SUVs now ten-strong out in the lot, a small infantry installation.
And so go the words to discuss the miniature militarization; a language
Unlearning the vernacular for combat and taciturn incursion
By way of pacifistic shepherding Lilith’s slithering incubi back to their den.
This act: impossible to translate
To a notoriously trigger-happy force
Whose hands relentlessly attend the loaded holsters from ceremony start to finish
With kiddush, the Bat Mitzvah’s mom cuts homemade vanilla cake
With both palms on shaky display. She doles out uneven slices, saves
Twelve for the attending officers, now congregated entirely
Inside. The Bat Mitzvah delivers a paper plate to each man—at least one
At each of the exit doors, even emergency. Her bloomed expression
Does not wilt to winter, and she weaves a tenuous grapevine path back
To her friends. Sentinel over the last two pieces of cake, her mother whispers to me
Under the wealth of well-wishes, I wish she didn’t have to spend
So much time side-eyeing all the doors. I squeeze one palm, sufficient as a specter.
The Bat Mitzvah looks over her shoulder. Her brother abandons a sentence
To follow her gaze. Their mother crumples my hand with the yearning for a fist.
It’s the closest the language can approach a righteous anger, from the little I understand;
A woman deserves better from the cities outside the synagogue,
She deserves more than a slithering repetition of history.
