Turkish Coffee over Christmas

In our first December
I memorized menorah prayers 
Lying on the floor 
Until our forearms touched 

Yet this year for the holidays 
You are drinking tea in Turkey 
On a Charon-operated ferry
In the evanescent sunlight 

The air is puce 
The water is deceptively azure 
There’s a saucer with an hourglass lady teacup
As you sip, our memories become elusive 
You shall have to see an almost-empty 
Glass half-full
How you wish we could just flip it over, 
Watch the sand cascade anew 
Reenact my time with you 

There’s a ring on your left finger 
I would have thought that you were married 
But instead you have been toying with the avant-garde—
Hippie bred in California 

Out of nothing you apologize 
And like the old automatons 
You used to draw up in the lab 
I become mechanical
Forgiving you in an atomic instance
Thinking that we could be friends 

Emma Lazarus and Albert Einstein
Stand before a Christmas tree 
One has stenciled in conclusions 
Altering the universe 
The other writes a poem 
Of a famous statue 
Neither would have celebrated Christmas 

Maybe I was unhappy 
Juggling your stipulations 
Maybe whichever God that I believed in
Carved you as my absolute

Sometime later in the evening
You are off to Germany 
Soliciting my pity 

I don’t want to talk about it

I was the older one, 
You remind me, 
As if I needed to recall
The hours bleeding into decades 
Faster than a child screaming on 
A Caribbean water slide

He is present in your photographs 
Father Christmas? 
Father Time 

I am not sure that you even like me

Every time I think that I’ve abandoned you 
I learn that it was never realistic 

Maybe I am unhappy 

There is a purple shot of Istanbul 
Through an inverted teardrop window
Of a stony castle on the river
The water flows in mechanistic ripples 

You say it’s not a platitude 
To wonder how I am on Christmas
Yet if you cared
Would you be on a ship 
Over the Golden Horn? 
Would you be hiding in a ballet in Berlin?

You pause to tell me how to do my job
Bother me again 
And when I am fully taken
Leave me in a rut

Talk to me about the opera 
Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella
If only you could feel these fairy tales

Well you can swoop in to abuse my memory 
When I sit lonely here on Christmas 
But you cannot ruin Christmas 
Because I am a Jew

Stockholm syndrome?
We both have it 

I called a Jewish friend today 
Are you working? 
Yes, he said, are you? 

Did you like your time in Turkey?
I wouldn’t dare to ask