Sometimes I worry about me.
The picture is of a ceiling, not a cat, but I thought it looked sort of alley-ish.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would rip this—this Moses’s—head off his shoulders and feed it to the alley cat that waits in the street. If they were really hungry enough to eat such a monster.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would challenge this murderous God. The God that punishes us all for Pharaoh’s sin. The God that curses us for not worshipping him even though he never told us of his presence. The God that takes it out on innocents.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would take the children of the Hebrews and stab them all. Let the babies go cold in their parents’ arms so they will never again laugh at the cat outside, never yawn as they wake up in the morning. Never grow up, have children, families. Hebrew babies, dead because of their leader, like the Egyptian children are dead because of ours.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, they would all burn in hell. I would no longer care if their God took revenge because what more do we have to lose? Our livestock, our crops, our children. Leaving me with a daughter with no brother and a husband with no son.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would make them pay, make them suffer. Call in the powers of our gods, Egyptian gods, and torment them until the end of time.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would have acted in the interests of my peopleand not let their God bend my mind.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would offend our own gods by killing the cats, drowning them in the Nile, because they sit outside looking in as they did before, back when my son might spare a little food—just yesterday, but so long ago—and they have no right to be here when he has been taken from us. Since I picked him up just in time to feel him disappear, go slack, head tilting to one side, never finishing his breath, never finishing his sentence.
I’m not Pharaoh, but if I was, I would have my revenge.
If I was Pharaoh, perhaps I would have earned this punishment. But I did not, no more than the calf lying dead out behind our hours or the sobbing woman in the street or the baby birds littering the yard.
But I’m not Pharaoh.
And I’m not God.
And I can’t do anything but hate.
