How to Be a Prism and Not Shatter

It is a feeling first, I think
outside of my body, circulating
in my space, touching not touching,
waiting. The feeling consumes
and I am restless for days. Sometimes,
much longer. There is even a feeling right there,
from a time I thought I forgot, and I know
soon it will come. Now it’s a different feeling
that knocks on my door and me out,
and it enters and breathes and moves.
It writes itself into something new. Then,
it’s out of me and to the world.
What is that source, that takes and takes,
I never know. I often wish it to be mine
but it won’t. I read a question once,
in a poem by Yona Wallach called “Cecilia,”
and I still feel the touch of her missing answer
in the chest, forcing itself on every cell.

 

Daniel Niv is a student of Tel Aviv University. She is double majoring in Literature and Creative Writing in both Hebrew and English. She got published in Caesura, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. She won the Bar Sagi Award 2021 for her poetry.