Day 428

(from a photograph)

A teenage boy stands in the ruins of a street
holding a young cat.  The cat, certainly born
to a starving cat mother in these last
months, is thin, even bony.  The boy too
is bony.  He cradles the kitten
as though she were everything
he ever loved.  The kitten looks
at him as though asking what world
this is that she has come into: nothing
to eat, no water, no warmth.  How
she has found her way to him
we don’t know.  What we know
is that he, fourteen or fifteen years
old, is also hungry.  His head 
is bandaged; what wounded him
may well have taken out his family.  The cat, too,
may have no mother:  hunger,
infection, the fatigue of caring
for a litter and finding nothing
to eat?  The kitten stares
at the boy, something
in his eyes she recognizes.  Is it
loneliness? desperation? A kind of love
beginning between them.