Everyone whacks her with tiny blows
the way you peel an egg.
With desperate bursts of perfume
she strikes back at the world.
With sharp giggles she gets even
for all the sadness,
and with quick little fallings-in-love,
like burps and hiccups of feeling.
A terrorist of sweetness,
she stuffs bombshells with despair and cinnamon,
with cloves, with shrapnel of love.
At night when she tears off her jewelry,
there's a danger she won't know when to stop
and will go on tearing and slashing away at her whole life.
Yehuda Amichai (1976)
