Why don’t you eat pork? 

If you don’t believe in God, my friend says, 
why don’t you eat pork?

I have no answer for her. I have only
the blue-tacked mezuzah stuck to the doorway of my bedroom,

the dried wax still wedged in stubborn clots 
on each branch of a bronze menorah,

the framed parsha, hooked onto a bent nail
crowding the far wall of my living room. 

I have only the memory of a six-year-old 
who sat on the floor at Ohel Leah

and hummed along to the davening, 
cradling a wooden cat in her lap.

Her braided hair was longer than mine, her eyes wider. 
But my mother always says, if she squints, 

we share the same smile. 

Rebecca Cohen is a poet based in London. Her work has appeared in West Branch, Across the Margin, and The Lincoln Review and she received her MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.