At the Edge of a Road With No Return

I woke up with the taste of dust in my mouth.

It wasn’t hunger or thirst — just what remained after faith had dried out from waiting too long.

Your name was still there, caught at the back of my throat.

It tasted like a promise that had aged without ever being fulfilled.

I stood still for a while, feet on the cold floor, my body crossed by a silence.

There are silences that don’t ask for explanations — only space inside us.

And still, I love you — the kind that begins before touch.

Before presence.

A feeling learned in whispered words from books,

in letters I never sent,

in maps I drew in my imagination.

You are an old ache I never managed to unlearn.

I’ve waited for you since before I existed. Since always.

I imagine you like someone building shelter with bare hands.

And when I finally see you — line by line, shadow by shadow —

you don’t resemble what I dreamed of.

Or maybe you look too much like it,

and the mistake was mine, for dreaming without limits.

You received me with restrained gestures.

Arms that didn’t open — but didn’t push me away either.

There were questions in your eyes,

like someone silently wondering

whether I could endure this version of you.

Harsher. Less empathetic. More selfish. Less you.

You ask everything of me.

Ask me to settle.

To stay quiet.

To bend until I fit into what you’ve become.

But I can’t adapt.

And still, I remain.

Not because I want to — but because I no longer know how to leave.

You are the wound I carry as if you were an abandoned promise.

Loving you is a choice so old it’s already part of my skin.

The other day, it rained.

And I let it.

Let the water run across my face.

And I cried.

Cried the way a man should cry.

Because some days, water does what the soul can’t.

You move with stiffness.

Rush through everything.

Turn your eyes away like someone who can’t bear to face what they’ve become.

You made defense a way of existing,

pride into armor,

distance into a language.

But you forget —

how to listen,

the beauty of a soft touch,

how you used to be you.

I see it.

The way you squint at what’s new,

how you love only those who look like you,

how you confuse protection with violence.

And still, I love you.

Sometimes, I whisper your name, like calling out to someone far away —

still hoping to be heard.

There are names that, just by being spoken, light something inside us.

Today, I have nothing to offer you but my staying.

Not because I accept your new reality,

but because I can’t walk away —

even knowing you’ve begun to repeat the same mistakes once made against you.

Maybe I’ll walk toward your Garden of Light,

if there’s still a part of you that remembers tenderness.

Because in the end, it’s this:

I came.

I stayed.

I go on.

And I keep going.

Slowly,

even if your map is wrong,

even if you are no longer you.

Happy birthday, oh Eretz Israel.