Paper Cut—Shiviti Sign

Summer is waning from the gold and from the copper and violet of leaf fall in gardens, and clouds at twilight that drown in their own blood. And the garden empties, only a few stragglers, a few…

Now in that same shtetl there lived a youth named Shimen, but he was nicknamed Simkhe (joy, celebration) and Plakhte (coarse cloth) because he was barefoot and almost naked and that was all he wore…