My debt rests in your fur
as they light it
and it burns
and your form shrinks
from this world
your black and white paw limp against my clutching
fingers wishing you here
those images are cookie cut into my mind
called intrusive thoughts and flash-backs
I know them well
they are not my friend as you were my friend
I imagine what you feel and then recall
you no longer feel anything
though that does not seem right
without religion I am left unknowing
where you land next or if you will
awaken in paradise or remain slumbering
whether sleep or a void, if we can truly leave
and have nothing of ourselves remain
but ash and debris
it seems impossible that you were once
jumping onto the table and making me laugh
with your antics
only to be nowhere and gone eternal
I may not possess sufficient faith
to build castles in the sky but
your energy stays like stillness in
this empty house and from the corner of my eye
I still see your shadow slink just as
my grandmother’s voice is pitch perfect in my head
is that imagination or wishful?
Or do ghosts haunt us willing supplicants?
A bouquet of delusion to soothe our empty
arms or
will you live forever within me? And when I take
my turn at the Ferris wheel
our nothingness will reside near one another
I like the idea, all I have loved will
mingle as returned starlight in the ether
and touch one another with reminder
for being alone or worm food is
a cold dinner companion I wish not
to believe in
even if God turns his head from me and always has
for his man-made lack of female
and my rib is long and sticks into my gut
reminding me I am ever every man’s equal
and will never lay down to those dull prescriptions
of what constitutes truth from a man’s tongue.
Your fur was thicker than all the cats here
who grew up hot and listless on porches
you came with me in a pink plastic box
obscene in its garishness we laughed
putting it through customs
the harried lady at flight desk remarked
well there he goes as you were taken
hand delivered, to the pit of the plane
and I worried because I wanted you to be
on my knee but no madam, I’m afraid for long haul
he has to ride in cargo and don’t worry
few of them get upset, as if she were crouched among you knowing this
this seemed false as so many things do
when big decisions linger like absent friends
at the periphery of moments
too quick, too big, for staying still
briefly I wondered; Should I really be moving?
to this strange country I do not yet know and
burning this bridge indefinitely
it felt as wrong as right ever was and I stood
in the airport watching the thin man take you
behind a curtain and then as you were on your way
so was I.
You see …
I took my cue from you
quite often
and of the two of us when we landed
I think you looked less bedraggled
whilst I fought with immigration because one of my papers
was not ‘just so’ and they called and fussed because
immigrants are not very welcome in any country
and annoy those whose jobs it is to ensure
smooth sailing
and when we reunited
on different soil with the sound of cicadas or crickets
I was not sure in those days
you were hot against my grandmothers blanket
and had peed because they don’t let animals
out to the bathroom at 30,000 feet
which was exactly how I felt, hot and wet and stinking
at the same time, in this odd place where
people were outgoing and spurned shyness or other
attributes we both possessed
with aplom
following our dreams or maybe just mine
as your dreams were about mice or pigeons and later
lizards and snakes
as you learned the ways of the desert
and perhaps the tenor of your meow changed
to reflect the inflection of your adopted country.
It may seem easier but it is not easy for any of us
who come by boat, plane or smuggle, to
lands not our own, we each bring with us
that belly full of ache
and you were always able to
soothe mine with your purr and ever
reminder of our start beneath colder skies and
smaller streets with littler houses and narrow
rooms where we knew our place and here
we could only speculate or clumsily test
our sea legs against
the strangeness of being
with mistake and estrangement
our sole friends quite a while.
Unable even to drive I walked you down the road
for your first vet check and people gaped
from their large cars at the floundering Europeans
walking where no-one walks and everyone uses
big trucks to go one mile and purchase a giant
sippy cup and some Ding Dongs, things with
names that sound fun and 40 additives
my kind of humor and banter lost against
surge of habit, the vet seemed surprised I
had carried you rather than driven and tut-tutted
at your lack of dental hygiene
but remarked how beautiful your thick fur was
and how cats in these parts tend to have
snake skin, we all laughed at that, even you
cast a fish eye his direction like you
possessed the real secrets.
I remember those exploits and driving to Canada on another
exodus when stateless we began again
another groove in our fitful recording
the deep snow and your paw prints leading
me nearer and further
like ice fish we swam in our odd circumstance
always together, staring out stranger windows like
spectators at our own fair ground
in cold you slept beside me and purred
in your sleep to the sound of icicles
warming and falling into snow the
sky a heavy weight holding its breath
eventually we returned to the place of infernal heat
and sizzling side walks where no one but us
and straggly weeds dared to step and the years wound like
lost yarn beneath our odd foray
until you were old and fragile
and I barely noticing because I did not want to
believe you could quit being the little cat
in the pink plastic box glad to see me at the
first airport in our new world.
It was naive or immature of me to forget
cats lives do not echo ours and mine seemed
suddenly far too long and yours bitterly short
a terrible echo of inequality I did not
have the strength to imagine losing you
when together we always were.
Even people who wrote said; ‘Dear Candy, Dear Halo’
as if they could see the join of your fur and my
burning skin against the other
I told myself I would be there when they
sent you to that place I could not follow
despite knowing in my mind the terrible pictures
would roam long and unbidden for many years
to look into your eyes and remind you how much you mean
to me and always how I will look for you
until we are reunited and then I expect
all this will be mere bad dreams and
again we can go forward, or side ways or
whatever direction the after world takes us
but please together, is all I want
for with you gone, I wait without watch
an absence greater than anguish
for you were my best friend in this lonely world
assuaging the hard edges and frayed corners
we came here together and still I am
more lost without you than when I arrived
for your bright eyes and happy tail
gave me courage Halo and ever shall I
look for you coming into the kitchen in
the morning with your half howl of greeting
starting my day and ending it with
putting you to your bed
never once thinking there could be a time
when you were not and I still went on.
Aristotle said it best; a relationship is
two bodies one soul
that is real love
and we are floundering when absent from one another
like the ice fish when it warms up
and water is all but gone.
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TheFeatheredSleep 