Bread and Bread

The evening that Anne Frank's words wash up on our lawn follows the blue internet day that shows me the map of a planned community  for Gaza, shaped like a gun, with complex industry spotting the belly of the barrel and a pink ridge of coastal tourism along the top. The Palestinians, who have not been consulted, had plans too: tomatoes, oranges, peppers. Olives and dates. Children and school. The nearly grown children at the school down the street from us protested ICE yesterday. One of them, probably, quoted Anne in thick purple marker:  Terrible things are happening At any time of the night + day Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes, families are being torn apart. 1943, 1984, 2023, 2026 merge into a dull twilight, and that night I dream that Gazans have 24 hours to choose between being sealed inside the plan or roaming free in rubble. Source: Al Jazeera The interior is a shiny mall packed like the Blackest Friday. Nearly grown children start bands, every...

We said goodbye to OC yesterday. I knew him for sixteen of his seventeen years, which is longer than I’ve known anyone else in this house. He lived with me in three places prior to this one. He was the last of the pets who knew my mom. Once, we assigned jobs to our cats. Ferdinand was a DJ and Temecula was getting her PhD in neuroscience; her dissertation was titled Why Do Some Cats Talk So Much? OC was Some Cats. His job was town crier. OC had a lot to say, and he believed that all human hands should be petting him at all times. B and I met him when, in a cage full of cats at a rescue event, he wriggled his orange nose under our extended hands. He was persistent to the point of being annoying, and endearing in his lack of guile. I could learn a thing or two from him. He was always beta to Ferdinand’s alpha, although Ferd backed off once OC got sick; I think cats know. But he was strong as a chimpanzee, as I learned the one time I tried to give him a bath, and up until a week ...