Stop. See yourself as a young girl on a pedestal outside Zara. Back curved, head bowed. Such self-containment, unawareness of the world passing by. There’s no mistaking it’s you. Look at your hands cupped in your lap: Are you praying?
Draw closer and see that you’re sitting on a tree stump. A loose dress flows beneath your knees, a braid falls the length of your back and—what’s that?—a turtle cradled in your lap. Your thumbs rest on its shell, but you’re not restraining it. It could leave anytime, if it wanted. Notice that the turtle’s head is not hidden, but protruding. It knows it is safe; you are safe, too.
The ease in the downward tilt of your chin, the fall of your arms, your open palms. You cannot know, then, that you hold the world. That, of course, you are praying.
Your feet, arched to tiptoe. Poised on the edge of delight. The way you’d lift off to dive into water or leap into air. Or the way you’d peak over a high barrier at something you’re not meant to see. But you can see. Remember what you could see?
Before you were melted, poured, sanded, polished, and propped on a pedestal at an outdoor mall, surrounded by the crowds and commotion you always hated.
***
See, as you write, that your back is curved, your head bowed, your feet arched to tiptoe. See, with your burnished bronze heart, that you are still a girl with a turtle. Writing is just another form of praying.
Miriam Mandel Levi’s work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction’s anthology “Same Time Next Week,” Brain, Child, Literary Mama, Under the Sun, bioStories,Tablet,Chautauqua, Random Sample, Sky Island, JMWW, MoonPark, Sunlight Press, Persimmon Tree, Flash Frog, Forge, River Teeth, and Under the Gum Tree. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. She lives in Israel and is an editor at Under the Sun: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction.