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| "Christ in the rubble" - Kelly Latimore Icons |
My three-year-old cradles a hawkmoth in her hands.
“I didn’t hurt it Mummy.”
(The thought had crossed my mind, I admit –
It wouldn’t be the first time something
Had perished at the hands of an overzealous handler).
This time, she's scooped it off the bathroom floor where it was lying
Waiting for that second metamorphosis.
It trembles faintly: still alive, but barely.
Beautiful. Fragile.
Strangely safe in this wild child's hold.
"I'll put it outside, mummy," she says.
“We mustn't hurt God's creatures."
We mustn't hurt God's creatures.
We mustn't take other people's things.
We must share what we have with those who have not.
We must be kind and gentle and good.
What does the mother say to her children,
As she presses them to her body
Wanting to shield them
From the hate and the famine and the fire
falling all over the place they said was 'safe'?
And what says the mother, not far away,
who is weeping for her stolen child?
Her child ripped from her:
a sick form of retribution for past and present wrongs?
An eye for eye
A child for a child
Until there are no children left.
The mothers weep.
And weep and weep.
There is no end to the weeping.
And still the fire falls and
We are all complicit.
The moth is laid gently under the flowers outside.
My girl turns and smiles at me,
Sun catching her wild hair.
For a second, I see this face of hers
in a burning pile of rubble
and I want to scream.
"We mustn't hurt God's creatures, mama."
