I can see now how it’s
been like searching
for a small light
in the midst of a
sudden power cut
like the ones when
you’re a kid, and
someone else has to
explain just what is
happening around you
and, having found it,
shielding it closely,
holding it tight –
together, in the heart of it,
through the dark night
I was seven when
the neighbour’s cat caught a pigeon
and dragged its twittering, tattered trunk
through our kitchen.
The cat and her mouth,
now clean and empty, seemed innocent,
but the errant trail of crumpled feathers
gave it up.
We hid it from mam,
stayed up in shifts, fostered and fed it sugar
water from a spoon, playing each other’s
game of nurse.
I remember the thrill
waiting for the magical renewal we were
led to expect: a resurgence promised that
would never come.
It fell still then,
its beak soaked, sticky with sugar, as its
drowned and silent body lay between us,
ruined and scrap.
Sometimes I wake from
shadowed dreams to see the smothered thing
in its throes, and I do not sleep. We were not
what you think.
I don’t feel bad about how
the world might be ending –
and I don’t feel guilty,
if that’s what you’re getting at.
I’m more concerned about how
I can feel myself bending –
a little like this, at first
and also, somehow, like that.
ataraxicat 