Blank page

She asks me to write something for her.
Because I'm good at it, she says.
Because I've written stuff for her sister.

 I tell her I'll give it a try.
She sounds all thankful and grateful.

My mind is blank.
I'm stuck.

I should know this stuff but I don't.
Where do you learn it?

It is something that grows over time.
I try to remember if I ever had it,
or was I faking it all those years?

I google it,
I search for it,
I panic.

I have been taught this since the cradle.
Since I was in first grade.

We would stand on a chair on our birthday and say what our birthday wish was.
We could have said anything we wanted.

A new toy, games, a doll.
But time after time the answers were exactly the same.

"I want Moshiach."
It was said with the sweetness and naivete of a young child who actually believed that wish would come true.

And not in 20 years from now.
But today.

I don't know what happened,
but I am not that little girl anymore.

You can ask me what I want for my birthday.
I might say a car, a new phone, a guy.

I will not say Moshiach.
Not because I no longer believe.

Not because I no longer care.
But because it got buried so deep underneath my search for life, for truth, for direction,
that I am not sure it will resurface again.

She asked me to write a poem
about the Rebbe.

Thanking him, dedicating to him, what he gave to us and how he helped us along our lives.
And my mind is blank.

And I don't know what that means.