Mark the calendar:
the 29th of August, the day you failed her. After years of trying, imagining yourself a one-woman Marvel multiverse, you have turned out the lights,
and curled as adult foetus, beneath your fur lined, patch work quilt, one hand on your Calico cat who has curled beside you. Another hand on that blood pump other people call a heart.
You will not spend 12 hours in A & E in the bustling inner-city rooms where it is not uncommon to see a half clothed, stale breathed man handcuffed to the bedframe, a uniformed officer at his bed, and neither will you spend 6 hours in the smaller suburban A & E, where traces of blood have not been cleaned beneath hard plastic chairs-
You can no longer hold space for her, though this is your job. Holding space. Leaning in and listening to the themes that reverberate in the pauses and the sentence periods.
Because the way you listen can speak tomes,
listening as echolocation,
as homing device,
I am here, I am here
you are there and I travel beside you,
but tonight, you scream to be the heard, the listen-ee, not the listener,
instead, you rest your ear against the Calico, letting her breathe softness against your chin, and she shares her purr with you, the vibration that travels through her when she is in her vet carrier, or when the neighbour’s Chihuahua ventures not too close but close enough,
she shares her purr, that self-soothing soft rumble from deep within her larynx,
come, the Calico says,
there are other ways of holding space.
Word upon Word 