cat

i can almost feel you there, sleeping.
rooftops identify your windows,
and cars go right by.
let me go, dear,
and don't call me love anymore
and don't answer when i call
and never, ever, write again.
that is an order.
in the periphery
the world is flying by.
yet life offers you rubies and you will draw blood?
what is your name?
what is the color of the darkness i found you in?
and why won't you reach a hand up to us? you want it so-
and moreover, where is your other face-
the one that could see ahead,
and not only back into the black,
back to the moment after birth
when you were passed like a gift
from hand to hand to hand
until you had gone too far to be brought back?
you are wailing in the face of the world.

as a memory,
you can live in my walls
like an army of stinking roaches,
reduced to spidery legs, and whispering antennae
and the glossy brown secrets of insect wings.
you cause me to shiver from time to time-
i will only see you in the dark, but i remember you.
beneath my pallid skin,
sequined with rainbows and port wine stains,
the blood in me isn't red,
and it isn't yet black.
i am the font of the unarticulated horrors of the day.
i bleed fragile mirrors, and white light like stars
i bleed thin air, and nightmares
i bleed pure, frigid, hope.
oh, rubies,
your lessons aren't lost on me-
and i am lost more each time.