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.
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.