Numbers
By Michal Rubin
Mohammed, Wadia,
two brothers
Ala Asous, Hazaa, Rami, Ahmed,
four brothers
six cousins
Rizkallah,
seventh cousin,
one missile,
hundred shards of glass,
one ambulance,
one mass funeral,
one village,
one sleepless night
at Muthalath al-Shuhada
I wish my body moved,
shook the numbers off,
22452600
my passport number,
two,
Yehoshua and Rivka, my grandparents,
two,
Rachel and Mimi, my aunts,
they did not get a number,
no ink wasted on their arms
four
bullets outside one small town
in Poland
five
o’clock,
a huge explosion
two
social workers come to help
six
lost parents
a sleepless night at Muthalath al-Shuhada
Stop reading the news,
I am told
counting
countless
counts,
the many zeroes,
trailing digits,
I am lost
with the numbers
Michal Rubin is an Israeli, living in Columbia, SC. The impetus for her writing came from the years-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a psychotherapist, a Cantor and a poet, she brings forth the challenge of distinguishing truths from myths, awareness vs. denial, conformity vs. individuation. Her work was published in Psychotic Education, The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Wrath Bearing Tree journal, Rise Up Journal, Topical Poetry, Fall-Lines, The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Waxing & Waning: A Literary Journal, South Carolina Bards Poetry Anthology 2023, Palestine-Israel Journal, and a chapbook published by Cathexis Northwest Press.
Photo credit: Abacus courtesy of the British Museum.
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