Withdrawals

                                                                 ten days 

Now, I notice that it’s been this long

Since I last folded my arms around another’s.

Holding them tight,

absorbing their radiating heat 

like a black hole that dilates into time,

storing the memories for many times to come. 

At the beginning, I think it is not a big deal

Because i’m a big girl now,

Then I realize this is the longest period of my life 

to be in this world, without hugs. 

                                                               fourteen days 

Distance and a pandemic got me short on oxytocin- 

A hormone that my body secretes when it is loved.

I seek the orchids, sword fern on my window pane 

As they scavenge for feeble warmth of the European sun. 

Timid, I soak in the sun’s defendant rays 

And jot down notes and recipes

On how to survive the absence of embraces.

                                                             sixteen days 

A hug is deconstructed. 

It’s about the pressing of two souls and bodies;

It’s about the heat emanating from proximity,

Penetrating fleece sweaters or polyester t-shirts

To touch the epidermis, spreading bundles of joy. 

It’s the smell and the touch against the neck. 

A hug is all of these things combined;

The power of which emerges only when they come together. 

This is why hugging the pillow doesn’t help;

Smelling his scarf doesn’t help;

It’s only all of these thing together

Lending significance to each other.

                                                        eighteen days 

I study it. Put an embrace under a microscope;

Break it to pieces, each syllable of its own,

In foreign tongues, I delineate the silhouettes of hope:

Abrazar. Hug. I’naq’, h’ibuk,

Encircle, surround, protect, and sipuk. 

I invent a whole branch of medicine:

Embraciology- 

the study of the physical touch and its effect on the spirit.

The physiology of an embrace: body, soul and mind. 

                                                     twenty five days

My roommate hugged me when she went back home for the weekend.

And yet I’m still counting the days of absence.

Because an embrace with a person I met for 24 days

Is not a hug. 

Conclusion: a hug is proportional to the depth of a relationship

And its depth is dug not with a spade but with 

A word, a feeling and a touch. 

                                                  fifty two days

The curious powers of adaptation slowly 

Help me stop counting; stop feeling 

the deprivation of the hugs that I love,

Accept the reality and its hardships. 

Yet, I know. 

When the time comes;

When the epidemic fades away

And I am back to the familiar almond trees on the Galilean hills

I will not stop 

Hugging, caressing, embracing, and pressing 

what my soul is missing.