It was when someone’s brother called with the future falafel in aluminum pans, sweaty,

and we flitted as feygeles out to meet       the winter-full, concrete night,

that it all began to click: the apartment building’s 72 doors,

the Rabbi’s words at Shul that hungry   morning, light from a runaway subway train

car, which cast a trace of strangers across the floor, passing like a dance.

Would I have found you on the dance  floor, had I looked for a trace

of holy song dressed in sweat? I don’t know. I introduce my once-future

beloveds, as if the same train won’t take them hungry,

home, like introducing oneself to the night which for the millionth time I meet

and am astonished. We are surrounded by doors     and I’m only a little afraid the click

will mean I’m locked out. Click. If it could teach me to better adore

I’d borrow your silver hand to trace  Torah. The congregation dances.

We hope not to wait to meet. The mourner’s Kaddish gives no rules for night

swimmers, how to pass your wet future     and know the sweet

jellyfish as your own hungry self, its pink, organza train 

the dress I wear to train myself to walk, hips hungry,

homemade challah, L’dor v’dor, clogs clicking

to the oven, to the bimah, the sweat       of non-reproductive sex. My once-future

beloved said redemption means to turn, so we danced in the air a trace

of the dress delivered to me in a box with night     creams and other psalms for which my hands meet.

Tradition charges us to meet        the dead with questions. When did you find yourself loved? Night

ends Shabbos, still we do not hunger            for work. My friends, I will couple my train

to yours, always. This is me tracing                                faith’s queer dance.

Does it sound the crickets’ discordant click? The rabbi, opening wide the church doors,

said, let there be a Judaism in the future       unimaginable to us. And let there be wine.