In school, the rabbi offered me the word spirit when I asked should I already hate mybody this much?Spirit is a woman who cannot leave a woman.Spirit has weights in her feet that keep her in her body.(Later the rabbi said you’ve asked enough questions for today.)Naomi, I write to you at thirty. I carry around this muscular bag.Shouldn’t each spirit eventually accept her body?I used to grab my inner thighs between my hands and clamp down until the spiritscreamed.I would study my purpling skin while I filled my mouth with gravel.Today I imagine spirit like a woman asleep in a pile of bones.I imagine love like gnawing.I wanted a body equally like and unlike my own and never found her.Do I wear my grief more like a suit or a skirt?My hands shake at the buttons. They struggle with the wire hook-and-eye.When I was a child, the doctor called my hands dainty.He told my mother I had piano fingers. Ones that could span an octave, or cover anentire face in its grip, palm to mouth.If nobody has died, why do I grieve?How do I dress the body I will not meet? How do I dress the body I cannot love?We Jews adorn even the mirror when we mourn.Our bodies become unfathomable.The men and the women wear black for a week, keen from the waist in the widow’sliving room.Every body looks the same for seven nights.When I close my eyes at night, my hands grow to the size of your back.I open my fingers in the silent room, fill the warming space between your shoulderblades.When I close my eyes, Naomi, your body remains covered in light.