Friday, February 16, 2024

WITNESS

by Jean Mikhail




I have witnessed little animals, 
their death throes at my doorstep,  
ones killed or maimed by my cat, 
Phoebe,  and from time to time, 
I have nearly stepped on some small dead 
something, and I’d love to catch her 
before the killing act, to turn back time, 
and gently place the baby rabbit back 
in its burrow, or set the fledgling 
robin on a branch, safely, but instead, 
I have tossed the carcass in the trash 
or pitched the body into the woods,
a safe distance away, and I have   
shifted my focus, turned my eyes  
from their bloody mouths, lifted 
my shoe to float over them, 
like  a cloud crosses the convex 
eyes of a child of Gaza, lying dead, 
and I saw him in, of all places, 
a Facebook video while scrolling 
through all the other videos of surfers 
surfing, of people giving cooking 
lessons, and the bombing of this 
building, the concrete caving into
a boy’s chest,  he will never crack 
a smile, or break into laughter, ever 
again, he was made to be a martyr, 
in his mother’s eyes, a martyr, 
his brown eyes softening into cloud 
wisps, into blue sky reflection, 
and he and other children throughout
history, the children of the Holocaust,
of Syria, and those others murdered 
for no reason, no fault of their own, 
don’t even have a doorstep 
tombstone,  or a proper burial, 
or a bell ringing like a doorbell,  
no one will answer the question 
why their deaths don’t matter, 
or how can this be happening, 
because let’s face it, 
we’d never get anything done 
if we solely focused on the world’s 
horrors, we’d never even get our 
shopping done, or have the strength
to lift our heavy brown paper sacks 
to the car because everything would feel 
so burdensome, heavy as a body, 
as concrete collapsing into the child
counted among the dead, a number, 
a child cocooned in a burial cloth, 
and the world tilts on its heavier side, 
and we are on the lighter side giving  
nothing but a thumbs up for dying children, 
and all we can do is hope for better 
endings, for a ceasefire and for peace, 
I  can no longer watch a mother grieve,
yet can’t look away from her, either, 
as she  performs the ungodly task 
of collecting her child’s blown off 
ears and fingers, wiping tears 
on her hijab because what else 
does she have but a sheer will 
to survive and head covering, 
and how else can she know 
her child’s hand from any other 
child’s hand, like my own children's 
hands, how would I recognize them,  
whose hand would I hold, whose 
fingers thrown into the air, asking 
which almighty to help them. 


Jean Mikhail lives in Athens, Ohio with her husband, who is Egyptian. Two of her children are Guatemalan adoptees. She has published in The Appalachian Review, Sheila Na Gig Online, Pudding Magazine, and other journals and anthologies.