The way I have to tuck bookmarks into books
so that you don’t pull them out,
thinking they are playthings.
The way you thrust a paw under the bathroom door
try to open it the wrong way,
you have no concept of right or wrong
or hinges.
The way you gaze at me from your perch
as I blend berries and oat milk for another morning
is it indifference or are you half asleep?
Lucid dreaming.
The way you interrupt my pen
just as I hit my stride
you settle onto my notebook
leave black and white hairs behind.
You almost make me forget your predecessor
but then I remember her
lying on the vet’s table
put to sleep.
That is not the last memory of her
I should have
but it is.
Like the one of my father as he
greets me at the front door
for the first time in a decade.
A shell of the man who raised me, a
skeletal, shivering thing
housecoat open to proudly display
the place where the surgeon opened him up
and fixed his broken heart.
2023.09.05 – 2023.12.03
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