Sara Kass Eifler

Dinah and Joseph

Sister, tonight I had a dream.
On the banks the cattle crawled away
beneath the lowing of the moon.
And the river, sloughing off its skin
of silver and of slime
leaked your name across the withered
fields of broken maize.

Brother, in my dream you stood
trembling, and bloody
on the great gold beard of the world,
and in my hands your tattered coat
flamed with life.
In my lap the starlight spooling.
And in my dream you bowed, bowed low.
In my dream you called my name

and sister, I awoke to your voice.
In the tent walls still the moonlight moving.
And though I awoke I dreamed, dreamed still:

I dreamed of our brothers,
of our brothers’ knives,
of the bloody knives of our brothers
and in my dream, sister,

in my dream, they sank down, down into the river,
down to the bottom of the river, brittle, gleaming,
they cut further, they cut through stones,
they dug through silt and soil, they turned great heaps of clay,

our brothers’ knives, my brother, my sister,
they cut through my body and they found you.

And I said nothing.
Still I have said nothing.

Sara Kass Eifler (she/they) is a queer disabled writer and rabbinic student. She lives on Cape Cod, MA with their partner. Her work is published in or forthcoming from journals such as Corvid Queen, Hyacinth Review, and io Literary Journal.