God is not a doctor

God is not a doctor

Vivien Drabkin

What can I give you, my son,
the things I have tried, some Hebrew songs,
prayers, a clapboard synagogue, oldest in Texas
these do not ensure your memory of the Motzi, our thanks for bread.

My cobbled Shabbat, chocolate brioche rolls under silken cover
and sometimes chocolate milk during Kiddush.
Perhaps this has confused you

as has my summer baptism,
no one way through church or shul
the beauty of ritual or the grace of a savior
keep a Jewish home or lose the child forever.

How can I speak of those West Side ways and Good News
a perfect Mets season, Riverside park during the fast,
fish from Zabar’s
alongside the clearing of Grace, refusal of Gravity,
and rising from a tomb

because you hid the cross in the closet,
no, you said
but you told me that the only reason God did not heal the cartoon lady in the
wheelchair was not because he could not
but because He was not the doctor.

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Vivien Drabkin
Writer & Teacher

Vivien’s fiction has been published in Guernica and Washington Square Review. She enjoys teaching all levels of reading and writing and currently works as an elementary school dyslexia interventionist in Texas.

Photography by Sir Simo