by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

When I met her,

she was sad to leave

New York—her friends,

art classes, her life. She spoke

about a family steeped

in Orthodox Judaism,

her father a cantor looking like a pope

in the photograph—

pointed white hat, white robes.

But I don’t believe in the stories—

do you? she asked. No, but I like them,

I said, thinking of the young, pregnant,

unmarried woman who had quite a story.

What do you think happens after death?

she asked. I shrugged, No one knows.

Maybe I’ll come back as a bird, she smiled.

Maybe she has. For a second,

one just hung on the meshed screen

at my window.