u/Guerilla_Physicist

Ganon is my 13-year-old tripod. Last week he somehow managed to break his ONE remaining back leg. 🤦🏼‍♀️ He had surgery 4 days ago and is doing surprisingly well.

He originally became a tripod after breaking his other femur and developing complications due to nerve damage that eventually led to amputation. So, needless to say, I’m more than a little nervous about going through this again. His surgeon is very happy with the repair though, and we’re cautiously optimistic. He is showing some really encouraging signs like lifting his injured leg to groom it and spreading his toes, as well as figuring out how to independently get in and out of his little makeshift litter box (actually a disposable cookie sheet).

He’s been ridiculously sweet and snuggly, although he’s also decided that 6 AM is an appropriate time to start yelling until someone pets him. He’s also discovered that he can dip his tail into his water bowl and fling water at me, which is apparently an excellent hobby for a cat in strict confinement.

Anyway, we’d appreciate some good vibes for an uneventful recovery!

Never Again (Terms and Conditions Apply)

I have held a living child.
I know the weight of a head against the shoulder,
the specific gravity of trust.

I keep converting the numbers.
Thirty. A classroom.
A hundred. A neighborhood.
A thousand.

Never again, we said over the ash.
We built the monuments.
We taught the children the word dehumanization
so they would know –
this is how ordinary people
let it happen.

And then.

And the rockets’ red glare,
the bombs bursting in air.

Made in the factories
of places we have driven past on the highway,
where people we know work the line.
Funded by the return I filed in April.
A mother in a tent
looks up at the sound.

A mother is a mother is a mother.

I know what it is to count fingers in the dark.
To learn a cry the way you learn a language –
this one is hunger,
this one is pain,
this one means I am alone and I need you.

I know the thing with no name,
as old as motherhood –
that moves your body between your child
and whatever is coming.

There is no body wide enough
to stand between a child and a bomb.

She stood there anyway.

A mother is a mother is a mother
in Arabic,
in Hebrew,
in the dark.

I will not sort them.

Between the child’s name and the world’s silence
falls the shadow.

Never again was supposed to mean
we had looked at the worst of ourselves
and chosen differently.

I sang it this morning.
Hand on my heart.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
o’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave?

Yes.
God help us.
Yes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/fAJvSYZxHJ
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/sPZZazf0iz

Ganon broke his leg, but his fireworks are still functioning perfectly.

Beans is simultaneously elegant and ridiculous.

Ganon and Banana each send belated fireworks from the laundry basket

Never Again (Terms and Conditions Apply) [CW: war violence / child death]

Fireworks from 2 out of 3 in this menacing trio

Ganon is giving Beans guardcat lessons. I feel appropriately menaced.