Tree of Life Sophie Klahr (bio) for the eleven Jews murdered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2018; for congregation Dor Hadash; for my parents; for A.K. The week after our family friend is not shotthat Saturday morning in synagogue, she invites us over for dinner. I’ve knownher and her husband long enough that their names have become a single song,syllables knit with an and—in your life you’ve probably known a dozen of these songs,the rhythm of decades of marriage. The song would have splitif she had been shot that day, but she was late to Torah study. Turnedand ran when she heard the shots. Before dinner, she and her husband passshallow dishes of cashews and green olives around the living room. There are not many of us,three other couples and my parents, but I have known them all since I was a child,and I, at thirty-five, am the only adult child at dinner, the other adult children of the couplesfar from our hometown, living their lives— [End Page 80] none of our parents have been shot. Iam sitting at dinner with them. We are eating a lightly dressed salad and stuffed peppers.It takes a while to make a stuffed pepper. It is a careful thing. In Latin, her name means bird—our friendwho was not shot. Our friend, the bird, has an easy face. A poem might sayshe has a sweet crinkle in her voice, something one looks forward to hearing,like the air that slips between a foil wrapper and a hard butterscotch candy one has kept in their pursefor a while, to be surprised with later. I have kept this poem at bayfor a while. And still, when I am visiting Pittsburgh,I shudder away from the corner where the Tree of Life synagogue still stands,empty now three years, drive different routes in order to not see the building, to not have the flashof bullets, air splitting and splitting and splitting. But our friend the bird and her husband still livedown the street, and must pass the lost temple all the time. Our friend’s name also, in origin, means desired.The week after she was almost shot, she invited my family and our friends over for dinner.Our congregation was targeted because we were helping a refugee organization. Our friend had us overfor dinner. Snipers stood on rooftops [End Page 81] when we filed into a different synagoguefor the memorials. Pittsburgh stopped and stood and held itself, watching the eleven hearses. We were sickwith crying. I warned my parents away from crowds of citizens gathering to sing—they went anyway. Jewish tradition tells usto have no nails in coffins—to have a plain pine box, held together with wooden pegs made by hand.It is a careful thing, to make a stuffed pepper— it means that you will make something balance. Our friend was not killed and soshe invited us to dinner. At dinner, there was laughter. Before the meal, we did not recite any particular prayer,but in the stuffed peppers, there were a few meanings of life. They were warm.They were filled to the brim. [End Page 82] Sophie Klahr Sophie Klahr is the author of Two Open Doors in a Field (Backwaters Press, 2023) and Meet Me Here at Dawn (YesYes Books, 2016), and co-author of There Is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective 2, 2023) with Corey Zeller. Her work appears in publications such as the New Yorker and American Poetry Review. She teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill. Copyright © 2022 Middlebury College