My cat is dying.
Lord knows how old she might be,
A second-hand stray handed down to me,
Through adjacency and curse of conscience,
But she’s grown older and older at my side,
Ceaselessly securing her spot in our shared history,
As my maven matron.
She never much cared for my first love,
A cat named Mouse,
Who was plucked too early,
According to my calculus,
From this world,
But when he left,
She became regent supreme.
The unquestioned matriarch of her domicile,
Which we were blessed to be born into.
Without the threat of her throne,
Her frailty has solidified suddenly,
Her age catching up like a hound,
Hot on the prize of morality realized,
In the clenched jaw-snap of a moment,
Which can’t be erased.
I can see her slowness in the sunlight,
Lingering in the limbo of appreciation,
That can only be enjoyed fleetingly,
Knowing that change of the most permanent kind,
Is calling on the horizon.
My cat is dying;
Long love the queen,
May she reign supreme.
Post-Neology 