Cafe Hillel

hole -noun
1. An opening through something; gap: I walk through the hole in my head that leads me to, into other people. I see a girl I’ve never met, never seen before, sitting in my exact seat in Café Hillel. 2. A hollow place in a solid body or mass: There are two holes in the top of her head. Eyes. Two holes in her nose. One hole below, but I only know it’s a hole because I have the same one behind my lips; hers are twisted shut. There are other holes too. One on the left side of her head. Not her ear- an actual hole in the side of her head. There’s one where her heart should have been too. 3. The excavated habitation of an animal; burrow: Too late, too late, I let myself through the hole in my head that lets me see people I’ve never seen, hear thoughts I couldn’t possibly hear, and now it’s too late, I’m here, but I’d like to crawl into a hole and hibernate for years. I’d rather bury myself in a hole than see this poor girl in my seat. 4. A small, dingy or shabby place: I met her fiancé, once. Ex-fiance. He lives in the hole that they were supposed to live in after their wedding. One dingy bedroom, one dingy bed they would have shared, but now he sleeps alone. They would have made it a happy hole. 5. A place of solitary confinement; dungeon: He’s made it into a different kind of hole. He didn’t say so but I can tell. Sure, he goes off to school, work, his parents' house for shabbat so he’s not alone- but he doesn’t really go. Part of him is a prisoner in that hole, the part that would have been happy if the girl who sits in my seat at Café Hillel wasn’t dead. 6. An embarrassing situation or predicament: I dug myself into a hole, that one time we met. I let my guard down because he seemed whole. Hi, hello. What do you do? What do you do? I write, I said. I go to Café Hillel and write, I said. Café Hillel, where his fiancé was killed two weeks before their wedding. Where the bomb went off and made that gaping hole in her head. Christ, how could I have mentioned Café Hillel? 7. A cove or small harbor: I stole glances at his eyes. Holes where he sometimes sets down anchor and other times drifts away. When I mentioned Café Hillel, his body stayed, but he drifted away. 8. A fault or flaw: Forever and ever, I avoid him. But I see his fiancé sitting in Café Hillel, in my seat. Talk with ghosts, ignore the living. I know there’s a hole in my logic, but can’t say exactly what... 9. Black hole. In astronomy, an object so massive that nothing, not even light, can escape its gravitation. Black holes were given their name because they absorb all the light that falls on them: The hole in her head leaks gray matter and blood, the hole in my imagination leaks to her, she leaks into the dead holes of his eyes. I wish I was a black hole. Black holes absorb everything. Even light, even pain.