may queen

I watched it, like an antelope, like a jackrabbit, like a deer on the moon...that pounce. skip. skip. pounce, one cat gone, another one, back on the spot, with odd and comical grace. Reclaiming his position which is mainly the position displacing another's position. But nobody ever really gets comfortable there and in the end it's his, open, waiting. In the end, it's me he is displacing, and I see it with comfortable clarity.

I looked for him in that spot. Most of the time he was there and I got used to him being there. Sometimes, he wants for a walk. a prowl. a cat strolling in the moonlight, swishing his tail and imagining himself free and on the hunt. but usually hes there when I look hard enough. if I wait and watch and listen. standing like it was his and protecting his territory in an oddly comforting fashion and smiling at me. just smiling at that smile that disarms me despite myself and tells me how I'm there with him. how he sees me. it's a smile of light and prisms and joy at being found. and i want that smile even when I want to hold my ground. even when I want that spot. it tells me how he bothered to jump and pounce and land right on that spot so he could see me just a bit better and smell me from up so close and smile at me. that damn smile. I see that smile and it's everything a good little kitty cat could want in a smile, its' real, it's for me.

That smile is for me.

But the rest, it's a whisper of gifts and summer and something I have no name for. it's something my mom never taught me to recognize. it's the whisper of freedom that comes with a price and a temporary crowning in the mayday parade. I'm back on the float and that cat that ate the canary smile?

yeah baby, thats mine