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
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
