Shmutz

by Felicia Berliner

The internet informed them that they were not allowed to use the internet.

So this is what a woman does! Shaves her shmundie, takes a man in her mouth, eats without saying a blessing first.

Had sex always been behind everything, and she just hadn’t seen it? The way people who aren’t religious don’t see the G-d in everything. The way for some people an apple is just an apple, a subway pole just a thing to grab when the brakes screech.

Omissions are not lies, in the field of matchmaking. Omissions are facts waiting to be discovered.

A freed girl walks into a sea of grief and possibility, and never finds land. There would be no dry land.

But it still takes getting used to, seeing the way it inflates, the way it moves on its own, a golem between every man’s legs.

Hashem a force separate from her sins and not diminished by them. Hashem abiding as the pleasure that lives in the universe, waiting only for the spark of her attention. A force that is known if you make yourself known to it.