Mem hums, Shin hisses, and Alef is the Breath of air deciding between them

—Sefer Yetzirah

That’s a C, not a U, she said again, impatient, and again I tried to please her, tried

to cup my hand correctly below my leaking breast. Surely my body

would not give me a body I could not feed. The nurse had other new mothers

to visit and here I was unable to make the right letter with my fingers, despite years

of scribbling the alphabet in new arrangements with these hands. God made the world

from words, according to my people, and in the holy book, I read there are three

mother letters: mem, shin, and alef, which stand for water, fire, air.

Mem hums, shin hisses, alef is the breath that decides between them.

It was the last dawn of the old moon, the thinnest scythe hovering in the sky

as I cut the cord myself: closed the scissors twice on thick tissue and stopped

the blood between our bodies. Held you dusky, squirming, on my chest, your skin

hot against my skin. Are you the psalm, or the page it will be written on? Am I

the hum, the hiss, the lungs, the breath? Whose body is the alphabet, and whose

the pen? Mem in the lips. Shin with the teeth. Alef from the voice, the tongue,

the slicing in between them. We breathed the darkness under a new moon together

on your first night—Rosh Chodesh, when we’re closest to the mother-god,

so I listened for her name. I tried to mold my swollen breast into the right shape

to coax the milk into your mouth. The words came later, with study, and labor.