A Long Way Through

A cat walked into her school after all kinds of dogs tried to kill all kinds of cats. 

Some cats were babies.

Some cats were old, drinking coffee on their porches as the sun came up.

Some cats were young and in love and were dancing.

The day they tried to kill the cats was a terrible day. Of course it was terrible. But this was a different kind of terrible. 

She didn’t know a word for this kind of terrible. 

Terrorful, maybe.

When the cat walked into her school after all kinds of dogs tried to kill all kinds of cats, her heart was huge and in her chest, and it was moving so fast it almost broke out of her body. Everyone knew she was a cat. She didn’t know what they would say. 

When the cat finally walked into her school after all kinds of dogs tried to kill all kinds of cats, nobody looked at the cat. Nobody.

Even those she used to go with to the Mexican store across the street for lunch didn’t look at her. 

This is a hard story to tell. The cat is still a cat and the cats who were killed are still killed and the dogs who killed all kinds of cats are still trying to kill more all kinds of cats. And of course the cat is still a cat. 

Everybody knows this and nobody talks about this.

When the cat walked into the school the cat couldn’t hear a word. She walked around like she was in a different cat’s body, in a different country, where the earth is drier and everyone talks about the thing that just happened and is still happening.

Here, everyone seems to be eating pizza. 

Nobody asked her if the cats that she loves are alive. Like her sister, for instance, or all the men she used to love. 

On the day that all kinds of dogs tried to kill all kinds of cats, this cat looked at art with her lover’s family. There was a lot of art and it was a museum. The cats she was with were looking for their other family. 

This is a hard story to tell. The cat is not a cat and is trying very hard for you to understand.

Everything about this story is confusing. 

Nobody asked this cat if this cat was okay.

Sometimes, this cat told her friends that she was not okay.

These friends told the cat that they do not care about cats and that the cats who were dancing should have been dead and they were. 

This cat didn’t tell them (and this was this cat’s fault) that she saw her lover cat cry for the very first time when he learned that his friend who was dancing was killed. 

This friend deserves a whole book and does not deserve to be referred to as a cat. 

These friends who do not care about cats care about some things. They care about their tax money and where it goes. Which is to say definitely not to save cats who are dancing in the desert and making love. 

Making love. 

The cat would like to make love. Not with anyone, persè, but to make love. With clay or with air or with the cat’s hands or with words. The cat would like to make love more than anything else in this world and shove it down everyone’s throats. 

The friends say they do not hate cats, they just hate everything that cats do and everything about the cats, except for some cats who hate cats too. Which is to say these friends of course do not hate cats. 

These friends do not ask the cat if the cat is okay. They do not need to ask. The cat tells them that the cat is not okay. How can she not? She is walking into the school and her heart is moving so fast and big inside her body, she is really not okay. 

For days, the cat asks everyone she sees if they are okay. The cat thinks, maybe they forgot how to ask, and when to do it. The cat was wrong. 

One friend gave the cat a hug. The cat cried and said I am not okay. 

The cat never heard from that friend again.

The cat is trying to tell you a story but everything about it makes her confused or sad. 

It is a hard story to tell, and lives inside her like an animal ready to eat anything it sees, but slow. 

This is a hard story to tell, and requires turning into a cat and making a lot of love. 

The cat sees an orange bag walking down the street and thinks it looks like love. 

The cat thinks the way to make love might be through anger. 

There is a lot of anger and a long way through. 

Yael Herzog received her MA in poetry from Bar Ilan University. Her work has previously been published in Eclectica Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and Quotidian Journal, among others. She received the Andrea Moriah Poetry Prize in 2017, and was nominated for the Sundress Publications 2019 Best of the Net Anthology. She currently lives in New York City where she is pursuing an MFA in painting and sculpture at the New York Studio School.