A dead butterfly got stuck in her hair, the metaphor

died with it. What else died that day?

Her feelings for him, which rotted:

the “bonfire of the vanities” no longer warms

the heart, her sheets seem dead too.

And in her way she grows shorter,

soon she’ll vanish.

The worry lines on her face deepen,

she pretends she’s not,

but she knows:

the tears now are only beginning

like the first rain of the season.

______________________________
©Rachel Eshed. ©tr. David Cooper. The Hebrew text is a digitized copy taken from HAVTACHOT KATANOT(LITTLE PROMISES) published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House Ltd., P.O.B. 1432, Bnei Brak 51114 (Tel Aviv) in 1996; with permission.

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