words

i hear birds greet one another
in neighborhood rhetoric,
dogs loose from chains
bounding yard to yard
snapping at the heels of dawn,
the highway drone
of mechanized passage
like wind tunnels
from the deep corridors
of normal people sleep,
dreams of terminal reckoning
laid bare in this blue twilight
and upon my bed a slender feline
delicately navigates
the troubled shore of tangled sheets,
nimbly stepping over and around
water bottles both void
and in varying stages of completion,
open books and invisible markers
the gravestones of my abandoned dreams,
her whiskers stiff
and quietly brushing the air for disruption,
she stalks the windowsill
like a gargoyle keeping watch
over the world of men
in their strange early pursuits,
the birdcalls like primate dialogue
and she consumes it all softly
behind the screen
and underneath the blinds,
waiting for such a day
when all will pause and be open
to her small bodied advance.

-S.C. Martinez