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The Golem Envisions his Origins

4- The Witch Remembers her Early Suitors, and Shudders

	I grew up in the sticks, or the brambles to be exact, 
		and romance was as thorny as the rest of it. First, 
	there was the yeshivah boys from over the hill, fingering 

		me with their scrupulously trimmed ink stained 
	nails. And every autumn there were gypsy pimps 
		coming through with hoop earrings and horsehair 

	whips. As rude as they were, they were still a welcome 
		break from the (God obliterate the memory) sow-mounting 
	clods who treated the table like a trough, and even in the dark 

		I knew their hopeful pricks were hopelessly provincial.
	That was all run-of-the-mill, until the consumptive son 
		of the Leech took my innocence once and for all 

	in the crabapple grove. He was probably a scoundrel but 
		I never got the opportunity to find out after 
	his eminently respectable family, may God blot 

		their name from the Scrolls of Life, took him 
	to Baden-Baden for the cure. As if I wasn’t the one 
		abandoned bloody and choking in an orchard of sour fruit.

	I pondered pining away but the thought of all 
		those aunts burdening my elbows with well-intentioned 
	advice nauseated me. So I hitched up with the first 

		gypsy that came along, despite 
	his affectations, the gold earrings which I later stole, 
		and the whip. I made it to the capitol and found a learned 

	rebbe willing to teach a young girl the Forbidden. I read 
		Kabbalah, played Abishag to his crusty David, listened 
	to him whine about his once-firm convictions. Then, 

		one day he told me he was some sort of 
	uncle to the consumptive, that the cure didn’t take 
		and the boy was dead, that he’d left a note 

	for me in the bole of a crabapple, didn’t
		the serving girl, my supposed friend, tell me?
	And now, is it any wonder that I constructed 
		my ideal lover from the purety of dung and the scratch
	of quill on parchment, every letter formed 
		an echo of old growth cut down?

con't.

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