I am emptied out, Hashem.

The chair is too quiet where my cat curled,

the air is too sharp where his purr should be.

I kissed him goodbye,

and the world kept moving,

as if nothing sacred had gone out of it.

And at the same time,

men and women in power open their mouths to declare

that my people, my kind,

should be locked away,

caged for daring to live the truth of the souls You made.

It is obscene,

this double wound --

home hollowed, world hostile.

I am staggering, I am afraid, I am small.

But I am still here.

Still calling Your Name through the smoke,

still clinging to the thread of return,

still insisting that mercy must exist,

even if the world has forgotten it.

Hear me: turn their hands from hatred,

turn my heart from breaking.

Let me live long enough to see justice crack open.

Let me live long enough to carry Shams’s memory as more than pain.

Hashem, answer from the depths --

not with silence, not with cruelty,

but with the hand that steadies,

the hand that lifts me back to my feet.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳, זוֹכֵר הַחַיִּים וְהָאַהֲבָה.

Baruch Atah Adonai, zocher hachayim v’ha’ahavah.

Blessed are You, Eternal One, who remembers life and love.