I am named after my grandmother Paulina Friedman.

The Friedman's were jewish. 

This is the first time I ever wrote this down.  

My grandmother's Polish family lived in Warsaw and were sent to Lotz and from there they died in Auschwitz.

I don't ever acknowledge this because I was never told this fact.

I can't trace my ancestors. I can't pray for them in Hebrew, I can't even walk into a temple.  

My grandmother's niece was Giovanna Ukleja.  She married Roman Ukleja when they left Auchwitz, one of the few who survived.  I have been told that they met when he pulled her out of the line to the showers.  He was a Polish worker in the camp. 

I walked by the monument to the relatives of Auschwitz survivors my whole life, on Riverside and 83 Street, by the flower bed at the end of the path that starts at 96th street.  I learned to ride my bike on this path.   

I wish I could explain the sense of not belonging that I feel.  In a neighborhood where everyone is Jewish and I don't have the words to say I am one of you.  I am always floating under the Jewish people.  

I am an origami

Marriage is not like a math equation

Given a) exploitation

over, he doesn't pay for anything

then, b) neglect squared by n

n being we never go out

minus that time I ate those crazy good mushrooms at x

x being the insanely expensive restaurant on 19th street off Park

find x (who's name I forget)

Daddy used to live in a loft right down the street

I hate that whole street

How he forgot his weekend so I

called

his assistant from a pay phone

and she took me to Brooklyn to sleep under her big Boxer

who felt droolly nice

Apply this to the present

(Oh, the name for x is Craft)

When one is inside a Marriage Box

small things are mood altering,

admiring the Spring 2011 Marc Jacobs white silk dress

with happy big red yellow orange stripes in diagonal

Or wondering how I can transform the shower curtains I saw at Anthropologie into my window curtains (can shower curtains be so nice?)

Hypothetical curtains defined: layers of a blue Fez (Morocco) divided by white frilly frills that are more (the dog) Cock-a-Poo than linen

jingle

small things get me through the day.

And then I find myself declaring "absolutes"

in the vein of "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore"

Confide (pause) I am exploited

Cry (not audibly) at the dive Big Nicks

(you gotta be from the Upper West Side to know about their free pickles.)

as I say to my husband:

I wanted a marriage that was EXPANSIVE,

to go to india

"you want to go to India?"

Unsaid: to go back to Madurai, east of Madras and rent a place by the sea

To EXPAND my world not become an origami

I am an origami

I made myself into an origami from this box

I like this pickle.

It was all about that he was tall

and that he was American american

He thinks it's about money, EXPENSIVE

Like I’m some rich girl

"Do you see me buying bags? ",

I blurted out in couples therapy.

I hear his dissmissive undercurrent: I'm "worldly."

How do you make a noun into an adverb?

as in: it's a sin to attach to this world

1/7/11