Cat
When I woke up
you were sitting on my chest.
Eying me watchfully
as if waiting to be fed,
as if you hadn’t scavenged
bite-size fragments
of my sleep already,
my dreams your kibble.
You may be a solitary
spiteful creature,
but like me you have your habits—
and today is the week,
I’ve calculated,
that I knew you’d come to coil
your soft sinuous serpent tail
around me, possessively.
My thoughts are
your ball of yarn, that you tear into
without restraint.
You come and go,
as you please.
Sometimes I become you
and my slit eyes flash
at my mother,
these fleshy pink stubs curling
to tear out the jugular
of she who reaches in
to embrace.
Sometimes I think she knows.
I remember glimpses of fur
plastered to her skin with tears,
I was smaller than her then
but held her close
in silence.
Hers had a brooding temperament
before she gave it up.
It might have died of old age
or pills.
But mine hisses and spits
in self-righteous fury
as the handlers come close.
She says
“The vet will make it all alright”
But it
but I
don’t want to be neutered
and mute
this is instinct don’t you know
At this point I’ll be the crazy cat lady.
You make me who I am, so
be my companion into senility.
I fantasize myself wild
and embrace you,
your claws are mine.
And if only they’d look
with eyes unclouded by fear,
they’d see
that you have a certain grace
and fine silhouette—
the way nature made you.