What happened to that little girl with her white cat,
on the street of the falling bombs,
the girl too small for that large love
she held under its arms, using her arms
the way her mother had done with her
as a baby, on the Gaza streets?
She was too small to support the weight
& the cat dangled, as everyone saw everywhere
it is hopeless. A machine gun would hammer space
with terrifying staccato death. A bomb
would fall through an apartment building,
all the way from the penthouse garden
to the basement where a family of twelve
cowered in embraces. And these explosions
shivering the precious cargo of our lives to bits
would send the white cat scurrying in terror
from her arms forever. What happened to
the white cat, the girl, that street of breathing buildings?
What happened to the photographer who took
the picture? Pieces, pieces, and more pieces.
What happened to the America who watched,
who merely watched, who merely? What happened
the the people who danced in a trance on October
7th of death. What happened to the men who
tortured children to death in peaceful settlements,
children they could see through chain link fences
for years? What happened to students in demonstrations
calling for an end to war and an end to Jews also?
We do not see the answer to the questions
the photo asks of us. We know the white cat
ran away in terror. We know the little girl looked
for her beloved in the endless Guernica none of us
can ever escape. The love too heavy to carry
runs and hides. Send more bombs until we do not see
them, the people beg. Erase them and my fear,
the children who hate my children. The people scream
in terror and joy and pain and in childbirth on battlefields,
they scream too. The white cat hides at the end of the world.
A small girl searches for it everywhere. She does not
give a damn about the bombs falling and the men
screaming the solution to the world, all around
her tiny body. When someone grabs her body
and absconds with her life, her tiny arms are still open,
her hands still reach through wildly vibrating space
back, back to the moment before,
when the white cat was still in her embrace,
when she had hope to save both of them.
What happened to the world that believed
in rebirths like Renaissances and enlightenment
that was not the light of burning bodies?
What happened to the white cat? What happened
to the arms of the young girl? What happened
to the tiny hands that reached and gestured
in the deafness of space as they carried
her away from her will and her love?
What happened in the dreams of the white cat
if it ever slept again? What happened?
When the presidents and the generals speak
every day about ‘small arms,” is this what they mean?