On a corner of my bed, here beside me where my desk sits, are the marks of your claws. It’s all torn up thanks to you. It is about the place where you used to flop down on a morning and wait beside me while I wrote. How empty the house feels without you now. You used to go up to your scratching pad and scratch the carpet around it. I don’t know what fault you found in it, or if you knew, if it was not a joke you were making. That bit of cardboard’s in the recycling now, along with some empty cans of cat food. They’ll take it all away today. It’s hard to say goodbye. They’ll take it and not know what they’re taking. For them, it is Monday; for me it is a week. Oh well, we’ve kept some things. I think that banana was the first toy we got you. You loved to grab it and kick it. It’s hanging in our Christmas tree. Your favorite toys, though, are in a box in the ground with your body. Of course, the tree, the big one we don’t use anymore, that might have been your favorite ‘toy.’ You’d hide under it, let your eyes grow big, and spring out at our feet as we passed. It was a fun game. The sorrow springs out at me too. Yesterday, I got a can of tuna out for some sandwiches and started tapping the lid, like I used to, to call you. You weren’t there to call anymore or to sit at my feet and paw at my knee like you used to. When I knew I had to put you down, I opened a can of tuna for you and let you have all that you wanted. You didn’t want it because you were too sick to eat anymore. It all happened so fast. It’s tough going without you, baby, and I don’t know how many years I’ll still be tapping that lid, calling on a ghost, a memory in my body, a sign wanting meaning.
A Week Gone
Tale Told 