Calico cats are lucky, you know. That’s what some people say, at least. That’s what this one is, I think. This one is lucky, and she’s lent one of her lives to the boy whose lap she’s perched on. She stays even though he can’t hold her while the nurses do their work. She stays even though every fiber of her instinct tells her she should run.

I find Hamoud again, this time with a broken box and a single kitten, smaller this time. Hamoud-sized. Even so, he looks like he feels big, standing there holding it, this kitten even younger than he is.

You know what she’s saying.

You know what she’s saying.

You know what she’s saying.

Focus on her smile. On the cheetah print hijab. On the purple dress. On the leather jacket.

A year feels like no time at all to me. It’s a blink. A blip. It’s hardly enough time to change over my clothes from the summer – and it hardly gets cold enough nowadays for the winter coats anyway. A year is small to my mind, and it is terrifying in its accumulation. Once you have one, there is another, then three, then four…

It’s 8:28pm on a Thursday.

A Thursday in August.

August in Boston.

How long it will take the dogs to break the windows – how most of them have been trained not to damage things and so will die inside living rooms and kitchens just because they know too well how to be good.