Wheeler Light

Kaddish

A week ago, you were here
and now everyone is posting
song lyrics on your Facebook
hoping the wavelength might
reach you in Gehenna. Here
I am, thinking not having
the words for your passing
says more about me than it does
about you. Jews do this—also
everyone. Grieving is a process
of many days and nights. Passing
by nostalgic playgrounds
I place you in memories where
you never existed to begin with.
It’s selfish, wanting to know
the dead better than the many
ravines of the ego—the cracking
of a voice, the breaking of silence.
The many eyes drowning in songs
that help the remembering.
Rabbi says the words I never learned
to understand for me. I send my best
into the night as though untying a knot
and turning grief into a guitar string.
Let me play you a song.
You all know the words to this one.

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Wheeler Light currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Hobart, New Delta Review, Pretty Owl Poetry and December Magazine, among others. He is the author of Blue Means Snow (Bottlecap Press 2018) and Hometown Onomastics (Pitymilk 2019).