WHOM IS IT REALLY WE KILL? OF WHOM IS IT REALLY WE DREAM?

 

Is it only two years the little cat’s dead now?

She persists

not in an innocent’s dream

but at my door, so real

 

I can feel her fur in my tears.

Whoever called the injections

by which we kill our animals “sleep”

had no conscience.

 

Euphemisms hide facts

but they do not change them, for surely

if my brain believed there was good in her death,

 

Eemie would not reappear like Banquo’s ghost,

reproaching with her presence

 

telling me truths I already know:

Even cats can die of loneliness

and she had had enough of being left to fend for herself.

 

Of course, there was food and water,

but after my father’s death,

she gave up waiting for some density of me

to return, to connect.

 

Then she gave up wanting me or food.

And when her liver failed

it was too late for anyone’s love to save her.

 

But what of her last look-around at the stainless world?

How could I think it curiosity,

that sudden raised head,

 

when it was only a reflex to euthanasia?

How could I not understand such plain table truth?

I asked the vet how long it would take.

“She’s already gone,” the vet said.