The Bitch

There was a bitch in my neighbourhood
small, white with patches of black
or black with patches of white
or something like that.
Small and angry -
And she’d long been
for as long as I have seen…
small, and angry and perhaps angry at being small.
A year ago, she had puppies.
And I heard that people took them away -
A month or so back
she had puppies again.
My 2 year old niece
used to call them ‘goggies’
and though she was scared to touch them,
(their mother now, doubly protective and
resorting to biting if barking didn’t work -
and ‘we’ – passing our fears on to a 2 year old…)
She went to see them
12 times a day
everyday
day-after-day
‘Goggies’, she’d say.
A car ran over one pup the day before
and yesterday ‘they’ put the rest
in a gunny sack
and went and left them
somewhere.
The mother - bit a few residents after that.
Today, they hit her head with a stick
and put her in a gunny sack
and took her away too.
I do not know
what ‘away’ means.
And I am sure
I do not wish to tell my niece
the possibilities,
and I do not wish to tell her
fairytales either.
And I do not wish to tell myself
stories from ‘karma’ and ‘destiny’
or give myself explanations.
I cannot.
I am tired of explanations
for everything and then trying, struggling, to live on,
to live on –
I am sitting
and absorbing
the anger
of being.
It is what it is.