It Happened
by Temima Weissmann
It is not depression, I realized,
because I can hear the buttered knife
against the toast today and
my eyes noticed the robin
perched on our sunlight-swallowed fence
but it doesn’t sing as it used to
Well it sings but
I cannot see its orange belly expand
or the quivering of the place beneath its beak, though
it is close enough to see
And for a minute I wonder if it is
a fake robin perched
on some holographic fence and
once in the aquarium I tricked my sister that the
fish weren’t real, that the glass was a movie and I
left the blue building believing it
It happened; there is a picture
of her on that day, not of her eyes rolling at my theory
but of our backs against the tank,
of the giant orca swimming above us
Temima Weissmann is an eighteen-year-old poet from Passaic, NJ. She was the Editor-in-Chief of her high school literary journal Sambatyon, and was awarded The Hersh & Fannie Fluss Memorial Award for Excellence in Hebrew Literature at her high school graduation. Previously published in The Lerhaus, Temima's poetry explores the presence of religion and faith in everyday life.
