By Yuval Dinoor

two years ago:

daniella runs across the beach sands
it’s not quite her birthday yet, nor is it quite summer
it’s just
december
and december is for kicking dead jellyfish and practicing pirouettes
it’s hannukah presents that are never quite on time and piles of avoided math homework

I have a picture from that day hanging on my wall

Daniella running by the ocean
she’s looking away, at something in the far horizon

and wisps of her blonde hair fly up as she hits her best arabesque

she’s wanted to be a ballerina since she was old enough to say the word
but she tells me sometimes she knows she’ll have to quit
when july 3rd rolls around and there are too many candles on her cake to avoid her turn in the israeli draft
she tells me ballet can’t last forever, but she still has this dream
that she and i will dance swan lake
she the white swan, and i the black

two summers ago,

daniella runs to a bomb shelter
the sirens she knows too well piercing her ears
her little brother holding her hand as they tear down the stairs
as the radio murmurs “til’im be’Aseret”
rockets in Aseret
happy birthday
and her mother hugs them saying “ha’chol be’seder”
we’re okay.

the day my flight landed, she told me it was the first week in three months the sirens had not gone off
that i was her luck
that i kept her safe
she asked me what color the walls in my bomb shelter are
that hers were a dull lifeless tan of israeli concrete, but she’d started to draw flowers on them when the wait got too long and the shelter turned cage like
how do you tell an eight year old that there are no sirens in your streets
no shelter in your house
no fear crossing your mind every time you see a strange man with a backpack

the old pointe shoes i had packed for her suddenly didn’t seem like enough
who was i to think some stupid ballet slippers i once had could make my little cousin okay
could bring her childhood back
could make her stop rereading harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban with a flashlight at night out of fear of being awakened by sirens
could make her stop fearing a real prisoner of azkaban
and nightmares and locked shelters and being forgotten in the head count

i think about her a lot.
i think about the news she watches
the whispers she hears
those old pointe shoes she hung in the shelter, because she knew they’d be safe there
i think about her dreams, her nightmares,

i think,
and my mind is lost as it tries to piece together how anyone can stand against harmless people
how anyone can stand against a 4’7” eight year old with a dream of being a white swan
who was just on the wrong side of a fence they hate.

but i don’t just think about her.
i think about a girl on the other side of that same fence
a girl i do not know
who also dreams of being a white swan.
a girl whose parents are called terrorists
a girl who is equally harmless as my little cousin
a girl whose ethnic group is accused and marginalized by the media
who my cousin is being taught is part of a group that is the enemy
a girl whose dreams are much less likely to come close to being realized

i think about that girl who wants to be a white swan
and a girl who wants to run her own business
and a boy who wants to be an astronaut
or be a soccer player
or even just
be

one summer ago,

i stare at an essay prompt in history class
what is the best state solution in the middle east?
(could there be a more impersonal question?)
i don’t know what a state solution in the middle east is.
but what i do know is that adults are shooting rockets into the sky to prove they are right
that each new rocket explodes into 1000 new problems

the black and white get blacker and whiter
and people take one side and forget the other
forget that innocent people live among terrorists

forget that little girls who want to be a white swan live on both sides of that fence
gaza
aseret
palestine
israel
just
home

one summer ago,

we watched the distant rockets through a window in my grandparents’ kitchen
facing the beach
the beach where we danced in circles and giggled as our grande jétés took us right to the cusp of the ebbing tide
we watched fire crackle overhead from far far away
and thick stripes of smoke left behind for hours after they disappear

all of a sudden, i heard my grandmother laugh quietly
and she said to me, she said

“af pa’am lo ra’iti kochav nofel amiti”
i have never seen a real shooting star.