A Poem by Kellyanne Fitzgerald
and i care more about the cats trapped in the warzone
than the people, because cats never deserve it
and i betray my own ideologies every day
and tell myself it’s part of my becoming
not part of an awkward undoing
of someone better, dissolving under my older fingers
like a salt woman staring back at Gomorrah
and i lay in bed and cry and listen to taylor swift
and think about my next doctor appointment
and what color my hair should be at my wedding
and if i would want to know during the end times
that it was really the end
and i walk in the orange soda twilight and think about
the silly sparkling wonder of spring and how it lights
me up every year like the same old blinking neon
sign at a Walgreens, predictable as a headache
pearlescent and muddy
and i think about taxes and nuclear weapons
and packing the apartment to move to a hardwood
apartment full of light and interesting windows
and the way my cat’s nose twitches when she wants me
to give her more whipped cream, and the fact
that something happening to one of my cats
would destroy me in a very precise and thorough way
and i feel guilty that my imagined cat grief
is more real and destructive than imagined family grief
for the eventual fading of relatives i never see
or the refugees who have fewer than four feet
and i have landed among the innocent again
after a wobbly, conflicted circling
like a stork coming down to rest in a pond
and if i was mary oliver i would go out again into the sunset
and it would be enough to have seen something beautiful
and there would be a peaceful end and nothing bad would happen
to cats in war zones
and in the morning i will try it anyway
put on spring like a gossamer raincoat,
and stumble like a baby giraffe
towards my own small life
i will replace the buzzing gray hornets in my mind
with the throaty song of red-winged blackbirds
and the gentle things a thousand miles away
will lay quiet and broken beneath the wheels
no one to remember them
not even me.
Kellyanne Fitzgerald is a writer and artist based in the Chicago area. In her free time she enjoys language learning, fiber arts, and folk art illustration.