Familiar

By Katherine M. Gotthardt

Last night I dreamt again you appeared,
thin and limping after what I could have sworn
was your final parting, last heavy sigh and whimper,
all of us laying hands on your haunches, private room  
with wordless music, pet pictures, candles. And as always 

when you revisit, you had been in a different place, 
unknown basement or city I’d never visited, deliberately
hiding where you knew I could never find you,
only to hobble back to me, sad and crusty-eyed 
among sidewalks and sewers, your once vibrant fur 
matted and thickened, undercoat hopeless 
from the grease and blood of your supposed death.

It is that same place that would never allow me 
to stroke the bridge of your nose, to hum Amazing Grace, 
or sing my own version of Edelweiss until you fell asleep, 
the way I did with my own now grown children 
when they were still just toddlers. And perhaps
that has been my biggest fear all along. Being shut 

in a world where love and I are no longer allowed to live.
Where everything that deserves the best of me
is separated by grates, cement, doors, and steel barriers 
stronger than my aging hands. Where things are hidden
among dark stairways and streetlights and hurried tires 
wail against wet pavement, drowning out the songs we sing. 

In that place, it perpetually rains, and I can no longer bring 
anyone comfort, or throw my soul in front of veil, demand
it take me instead. So I can come back again. Because, as they say, 
that isn’t the way it works. Is it? We only have one life to give?

*Familiar