Milkweed

When you own nothing, it's easy to let things go.

Who are you?' I didn't understand the question. I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?' I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.

He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.' I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?' 'Inside.' It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.

Some nights, we were a city of two.

So," he said, "we ourselves will be the candle flames." He put his hands on his chest. "Feel your hearts, how warm they are.

Happy". I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. "Tata, what is happy?" He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me. "Did you ever taste an orange?" he said.

They don't live here. They live in Heaven.' Where's that?' I don't know,' I said. 'Enos says it's right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it's in Russia. Olek says Washington America.' What's Washington America?' Enos says it's a place with no wall and no lice and lots of potatoes.

You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered

I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move.

I loved his goatee even more than his mustache. It was so soft and white. I wanted to rub my face in it. I wanted to climb inside it and live there and peek out.

The louder the babies screamed, the brighter the lights.

You" - he pointed at me - "are the black pearl.