by Pamela Wax

The Rabbi and I       

            endorse checks with identical signatures, leave the same fingerprint
wherever we touch. But she’s the one to glean glints of silver and prismed

arcs of color in sewer drains, while I regard shadows gathered like rumors
under every streetlamp, broken or not, and peek over our shoulder at corners

you’d find in slasher flicks. The Rabbi projects authority on the walls
where I’m a mere bluebonnet, budding under my own brim to avoid her sun.

The Rabbi keeps her shit together as clients (on a quest for miracle
or revelation) leak their classified secrets of shame and sorrow,

sometimes in a single bound, sometimes doled out like accounts payable,
one small disbursement at a time. The couples—stung and nettled—spill

chapters and verses of their sex lives into the upholstery while I perform
mental somersaults on her shoulder, wonder what she’ll draw next

from her rolling index of proverbs and cautions. I brandish pom-poms
at her every touché and will her, at times, to spew expletives as I do.

My sororal doppelgänger delivers whole sentences on a silver-tongued
platter to hungry crowds of spectators—inhabits Audre Lorde’s erotic

as power electrified, while I, her unassuming Clark Kent, am hamstrung
by the wisdom she strives to confer, too afraid of mansplaining to speak

aloud in public. She never joins me in the pool with her thou-shalt-nots,
though she’d love to see mine drown there, resuscitated as hallelujahs.

And while our husband claims to be her most faithful congregant, I rarely
let her join us in the bedroom. She jokes that she’s a better “professional”

than a “personal.” Had our brother called her at the office, rather than me
at home before he jumped from that bridge, he might still be two-stepping

in his cowboy boots at some bar with his husband. So if—when—you need
counsel, best try the Rabbi at work. She’s there during business hours, waiting.

Photo by lesha tuman on Unsplash