words

my cat runs from me at times.
in the dark hours i find her in solitude
chasing spiders or watching shadows race the night
and she finds my presence troublesome,
she flees from my outstretched arms
and disappears into the strange corners of this house
where i am not welcome,
though not always;
often i wake in the early afternoon
to find her studying me at sleep,
the slow rise and fall of my chest
as if at rest i am acceptable to her ideology
and she will lay beside me and stretch a lean limb outward,
flexing the pads of her feet against my sarcophagus,
her claws extending and retracting
leaving little red marks on my morning flesh.

her eyes are wet marbles that follow me
with great concern, as if i conspire against her,
and perhaps she senses a change in me i cannot feel
that causes her skittish opinion to change
at the whim of some feline ethos,
now i am safe to trust and she will curl into herself
against me and sleep to steal my warmth
and to feel the faint beating of my heart
that draws her back to the long ago
when such things were abstract, illucid,
soft dreams wrapped in prenatal vibrancy
until she was forced out into this place
sightless and crying and terrified,
pink and wet and newly lightfound,
marveling at the air, the sound,
huddled against her own calling out to the unknown.

she feels the shifting of the earth beneath her feet,
the wrecking of ancient mist-driven memories,
she holds in her tiny form all the world’s mystery,
contained within that little skull
and behind those crescent eyes,
squinting to keep them in place
against the force of my inquiries
and what we take for simplicity is contentment,
trailing a bright colored string,
watching the movements of inanimate things
to measure where their allegiance lies,
studying the habits of lesser things much as we do
and often i find her at the window
watching creatures storied in her blood
passing nimble and exotic in the world she cannot reach
just beyond the glass
and i know her heart beats the sad notes of a trumpet
or she will sleep in the sun
where it spills onto the tile
and she is one with the light, the warmth,
she meows in protest the caged way she is to live
and had i a greater heart i would set her free,
but i do not, i do not.

-S.C. Martinez