It Took a War 

by Jena Schwartz (Amherst, MA)

~ for Stella ~

It took a war for us to do this –

her words as we exchanged numbers 

after two hours of talking over decaf, 

trading name stories, hair products,

questions of what even matters now,

questions of what constitutes courage,

affirmation that we’re not overreacting. 

It took a war for us to leave our houses 

in the morning, to interrupt our routines

and leave the pets wondering, 

risk a new beginning, discover 

we have the same necklace, 

the silver cube with the Coleridge 

quote engraved in the tiniest letters –

he looked into his own soul…

mine a gift to myself as a young woman 

not yet out, not yet found, 

hers a gift from her best friend, now gone 

yet always with her. 

What bookends our days, 

what bookends our lives?

Always my thoughts turn to the spaces 

between – between danger and safety, 

sunrise, sunset, 

birth and death, war and peace. 

All of these absolutes that when 

broken open reveal a thousand 

stories, shards, fragments, letters

so small we need magnifying glasses

to read them. 

You have the right to remain curly, 

the slogan goes, she told me.

You have the right to remain Jewish. 

You have the right to reach out 

across the bridge, to bridge the divide, 

to burn bridges when you need to, 

to turn to face the door where the Shabbos bride 

blesses the room with her messengers of peace,

the door with its mezuzah

reminding us to love our God

with all our heart. 

It took a war to see how quickly 

our sense of safety would quake 

under the weight of hatred, 

a doppelganger for a love of justice, 

and how justice herself weeps 

at how words so laden 

with suffering are thrown around

so casually without listening 

to the sounds of those who live 

inside of them, who cannot keep 

up with counting their dead, 

and whose cellular memory 

is not a thing of the past 

but the face of a woman 

who could be my daughter 

dancing in the desert, 

the daughter whose name 

is in the title of one of my new friend’s 

books, and how this morning 

this new friend asked for my address

so she could send an inscribed copy,

and we shared links to hair products,

some slant way of saying it took a war,

we need each other now, 

we cannot do this alone, 

we are for each other 

and for ourselves 

and for the other, 

the stranger, 

the never 

again.

Jena Schwartz is a poet, essayist, and writing coach whose work has appeared in Jewish Journal, Cognoscenti, On Being,Tikkun, and Vox Populi, among other publications. She lives in Amherst, MA, where she serves as Poet Laureate at the Jewish Community of Amherst. Learn more about her work at www.jenaschwartz.com.

This poem first appeared on Friday Dispatch, Jena’s Substack page, and is reprinted here with permission of the author: https://jenaschwartz.substack.com/p/friday-dispatch-it-took-a-war