The wires are painted colorful, don’t mean the life they hold is too.

Still hurts when the sharp edges stick, forced deep into your skin.

The chains may seem loose, don’t mean the chained are so free to move. 

They look happy!

-You must see their faces when they beg for life, for their babies, 

for one moment of peace, 

long before they’d start to live, 

or never get a chance to. 

Perhaps even those imaginations of ours would have been more than enough 

if we dared it. 

What does it take from us to let them continue their state of joy or struggles?

– Like most of us would want with our lives despite what we are told, 

      and despite whatever life throws at us – 

only a heart? ability to think? Then, 

    Maybe a few words from others 

      Who either oppose or share similar questions.

 

The children, with their unadulterated views

look at them as a friend, as an individual

Someone they can hug or lift up

As they grow up, 

|: The look of curiosity about their personalities,

    2[Do they like to run?

Or bask in the sun most of the time

Treats, their favorite leaves, or big meals?]

1[unfortunately,

takes the shape of looking for commodities,

At the grocery, 

On the kitchen counters, and at dinner tables] 

We forget the smile we saw in them, :|

{But, don’t we, do remember their face of sentience?}

 May be just yesterday, or last summer

one closest moment, the furthest pleasant memory 

       that evoked may be something lost in us…

they lightened up our day with their natural animal disposition–like ours.

 

What we grew up with isn’t what we still owe to, to commit all that we grew up with. 

Please, don’t wait for the others so you can open your eyes too.

  We’ve afforded many a blindfold in history. 

But we are not in charge of what happened way before us in the past.

We Are Responsible for the Now. And will be held accountable… beyond us now 

   when the future looks upon Our History of inactions or indifference. 

And, dear, would we be able to look into their eyes and still say what we say now — with all the GHG emissions, deforestation, worthless waste, climate crisis, depleting biodiversity, and species extinction… we’ve caused most terrifyingly (failing to address) at the expense of animals non-humans (and humans), either ridiculously over-populated or extinct or just an inch close to extinction.

I hope we know, i wish we knew; but i do hope we learnt–

–one less victim still means something; 

because when we consider each adores their own, every one of them Count!

 

---

“And even though all violence is not the same-in its consequences or its capacities, all violence is horrifying.

Is there some way to assert this principle of equality-in-death that will not diminish any of the dead?

Is there some way to assert this principle of equality-among-the-living that will not demean, or diminish, any of the lives under attack?” (Jordan 49)

 

This is so important to understand. I wish all of humanity understood this in depth about the “deaths” and the “living.” These questions are important to unravel what’s happening in “Israel-Palestine.” 

 

Jordan poses so many questions in her letter to her friend, mostly rhetorical and questions aimed towards the world more than her friend. She is confused at how the world has come to respond to each other.

 

Pouring her depth of reflection for the world as rhetoric towards human society’s ideologies in her letter to her friend during their grief of a permanent loss of their dear friend in the Middle East, she is seeking answers for equality keeping both the dead and the living lives in mind without speaking of sides or numbers but honoring the individuals, each individual who once lived a special individual life. 

 

With all the feeling of defeat and helplessness, she also assures her friend that there is hope! And lists factual bullet points of the hope including 300 Israeli reservists refusing to serve in the IDP, collective voice of women in black and Jewish people in Israel and America speaking up for peace and against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Jordan appeals to her friend in the letter to not be (accidentally) consumed by the hatred of some of the world.

 

With and despite all the feeling of defeat and helplessness, Jordan assures her friend that there is hope! And lists factual bullet points of the hope including 300 Israeli reservists refusing to serve in the IDP, collective voice of women in black and Jewish people in Israel and America speaking up for peace and against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Jordan appeals to her friend in the letter to not be (accidentally) consumed by the hatred of some of the world.

 

In her poem “Moving Towards Home,” she writes, “I am become a Palestinian / against the relentless laughter of evil.”

 

---

When I was fifteen, 

I witnessed my grandmother beating the life out of a young goat, as if they were a block of wood, just because they accidentally entered our premises and ate some vegetables in our garden. Deeply troubled and angry, I saw the gate was closed, so i opened it, and the goat furiously ran for their life. I tried explaining to her why the beating was cruel and unnecessary, only to realize no sign of feeling any remorse.

 

At sixteen, 

I couldn’t protect the baby goat my grandmother purchased to ritually sacrifice them for my brother’s safe and successful journey to South Korea.

I grew up closely watching animal slaughter from weekly house dinner to bi-annual festival shows and neighbors coming in to buy in kilos. I was conditioned to witness “the normal” and get along with the norm. But since after being sixteen, I decided enough was enough and I don’t need to get along with whatever society feels the comfort to accept as “the norm,” in Nepal, America, or wherever I end up.

They look at me 

And they see me for my diet, mere preferences,

inconveniences to (most of) them,

Rarely for my values,

or what i see in them when I look at them.

And when I am not looking at them.

When I am looking at parts of them.

When not looking at any of them.

I think about them, every day

Because they are throbbed 

We rob them, not only their right to live

Their body, their laughter, their voice

Their thoughts, stolen as if they never exist.

 

It is a choice! 

But also

A stand in defense of the sentients, the most vulnerable and violated, who we empathize with every day, while we have them so easily on our plates day-to-day. The difference between us and the wild is that, unlike them, we can put up the biggest smile on our faces and celebrate feasts of the dead. We’ve normalized it to such an extent that barely do we give a think, ‘What’s so Wrong about It!’

One of the cruelest punishments I can think of, to anyone, is to stop thinking about them, their existence, foot-stepping over their sentiments.

 

Excluding those sentient beings just because we don’t see the others and our close ones including them? Shouldn’t that only make us do the opposite? 

Looking away is understandable, 

Looking away and carrying on being indifferent to their pain is not.

 

It’s the least we can do, and it is the most we could.

Liberation for All. Until Every Animal is free. Until Every Cage is Empty.