The prophet

Tzvi Hirsch
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

This train is like a glacier but when I look out the window all I see is the desert. The trip is not so long but I feel it’s been forever, lost in my thoughts.

I get off and all I see around me is a the void.
A small dusty bus is trying to leave without me. I just take it and I get off in the middle of nowhere.

In the moshav there is a deafening silent. Every house looks abandoned. I almost can’t ear the cicadas anymore, some Arab workers among a prickly pear cactus are sitting in the front yard looking at me.

And then I see you, coming out from a flourishing green bush, you take my hand and you take me to a big house. A big dead tree is painting warm dreams on us with his shadows, until we enter through the white door. You don’t show me anything, we slowly go upstairs, in a tiny room which is not yours. There’s only a bed with navy blue sheets and a paper box.

I hold your big hand while you kiss me, and when I look at you, your eyes are like a ripe passion fruit. We spend some time there, it can be an hour or two but maybe it’s just 20 minutes. You taste like dates, your heart beats like a drum. Someone is cooking in the kitchen.

We go out and we start walking in the heat, around olive and fig trees. It’s me, you and the strong smell of dried grass. We are so close, your sweat crowns your forhead but you are an abdicating king. I suddenly feel as cold as the train I took in the morning.

You have to go working the land with some men, I end up in a dark room, browsing dusty books in a language I still don’t know. I look for your name in all the letters I see.
I find some paper and a pencil, I write you a note and I leave it on the kitchen’s table, next to some cracked plate with cold rice and raisins. I never wrote your name before.

I walk until I found a bus. The morning after I realized that it was the first day in which I never said a world. You could have been my prophet.

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