Page 210 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing
P. 210
When I went to see you at the clinic they let me take you out of your cage, they
unhooked the tube from the IV, they led us to a private sitting room where we nestled
down together on the couch. Your belly was shaven, you had an orange velcro sleeve
on your foreleg. I covered you with my green parka, you were shaking and crying, your
claws dug into me. I sat there with you on that couch as the sky darkened out the
window and the room grew black. I had as much time as you needed. After an hour I
could feel your body starting to relax. And then it came. The softest purr. You started
to lick my hand. You’d come back, you’d let me bring you back.
No guilt. The vet said there was nothing to be done. I did all I could. No regrets. I took
time to stroke you to talk to you to just sit with you. We spent long hours sitting together,
you and I.
I wonder what I will do with myself all day long, all my life. I fear a dreary succession of
days filled with "no," no you, no ground, no heart at the center of things.
Don't expect, say the Buddhists. Learn to live in the moment just as it is. But it's my
body expects you, in every moment, when I sit on the floor my hand expects your head
to come find it, to push its way through, expects your whole body to come tunnelling
through after, then to turn around and do it again. My waist expects to feel you sidling
up against it, circling round.
My eyes expect you, only now do I see how the ever-present possibility of you filled
these rooms, how atmospheric was my anticipation of you. How the sight of you—your
heart-shaped face your pale green eyes your dainty step your electric fur gray white
diaphanous—brought. . . relief, delight, joy. And even, sometimes, shock, the shock of a
lover showing up when you're not expecting her, oh remember how you suddenly
appeared down by the lake on that full moon night? I’d never seen you there, you'd
never ventured down that far, yes it is true when you suddenly appeared and often even
