Luco wishes you a belated happy Valentine's Day

  

I know it is post Valentine's Day. Post-February the 14th. I have missed it! That time of  hearts, cheap candy, and cries of love. Devotion.

And I know I let the day slide by. I did not look any of the animals in this house in the eye - say to them dearest, my heart is in your paw or something else as bland. Instead I slept. Slept and dreampt and then awoke to find Mingus in bed with me.

Mingus, uninvited. Mingus, my cellmate these past eight years.

Strange how quickly and how very slowly eight years have washed over us. A moment ago, here he was mewling in the night: today I am an old feline, bent, stooped. And he hardly any green left.

He is half my size and twice my heart.

And if I were the type to fall and fall in love, it would be into him that I would tumble.

See you his spotted paws? His vulpine ears?

And when he dreams he moves his body, inching closer or further away from me. His whiskers tremble with slightest sigh.

I did not ask him to be my Valentine. I have never asked anyone to my Valentine be.

And if I did, what would he say? Would he scoff, tossing golden fur in disdain? I imagine every bone in my body disintegrating at the sound.

Maybe I would say - my heart

                                          is a kind of poison            tonight

it is overfull

                                  and  you     an antidote

His laughter would be so resounding as to wake every sleeping bird, every nestling thing starting up, reaching for mother, craning neck to hide - small, small - and I a ghost, then, disappeared, then.

Perhaps he would be angry at my audacity. Angry that after eight years, eight years, I am now sidling up to him, searching his eyes for warmth. He might have loved me once and forgotten. He might have loved me once and grown to hate me. He might have loved me once, before I became who I have become.

And who am I? That which encompasses everything and which is itself nothing - that which is of the air - that which cannot be named and yet we name - the same as you and as you and as you and as you.

And happy Valentine's Day to us all, yes? To us all searching and not finding, or searching and then finding and then losing, or searching, and having searched, grown tired - to all of us buried beneath the rubble of ridiculous expectations. To the tyranny of desire. To knowing better and not caring. To never knowing better and not wanting to learn.

To all of us awake in the middle of the night, startled by Mingus' laughter which permeates our dreams.

And yet he lies here, with me, and I lie silent, lying to myself, playing word games in my stupid head, imagining my tongue on his ear. My body covering his.

And doing nothing. Nothing.

Happy belated Valentine's Day. I could not bring myself to post this before. I could not bring myself to face these feelings.

And facing them has taught me this.

Luco is to craven as Mingus is to kiss.

Happy Valentine's Day, Love Fremlin

Today I'm rather melancholy. It's Valentine's Day, but probably you already knew that? I woke up with a headache that echoes the ache in my heart. It's a pulsing kind of thing. A wind-in-the-leaves-that-keeps-you-up-at-night kind of thing. Fluttery all around and through my body.

I live in this storage room.

It's small, which I like, but lonely. So lonely. Sometimes at night when the-wind- in-the-leaves makes me anxious I pace around the house. Imagine myself a larger, more terrible animal.

A panther. Jaguar.

But who am I fooling? No one, reader, you're right. No one. Most days I stare through the cheap plastic of the Tubby Kat Door and dream myself free.

Free of dogs and of other cats. Free from the myriad bondages of my every day. The binding board of the laundry room door - it keeps me from company. From MR, from whomever. From my love, Mingus.

My valentine, Mingus.

The reason I weep as I write this: Mingus.

his eyes glittering

from across the room he stares

and won't reach for me

Oh, Mingus, for whom I write poetry.

And when I'm brave and I stick my head from the door like a turtle from the water it's just seconds before chaos slams me back. The cacophony of barking, screaming, traffic, singing, bass guitar, cooking, laughing...

It is too much. Too much for an admittedly elderly feline to tolerate. Yes, household, or as Luco would have it, prison - yes, I can stand you, but only in the night with the company of the sounds-of-leaves. Only when you are restful. Only when the dogs and all their humans sleep.

And yet. If I had an inkling, reader, a fragment of a hope that Mingus would return my sincerest affection I'd away to him in a moment.

Be at his side, leaning forward to lick his forehead. 

But it is not to be and it is not to be. It seems to me even that he prefers the company of that woman, that prison guard, that MR, to me. Like a dog he comes when called.

And so, do I want that in my life? I tell myself no. I tell myself to hold out for a cat more wise. A cat who is maybe just a bit into me. Who would tell me my stories are interesting and my manner charming.

A cat, in a word, who would adore me. Adore.

It seems the closest I get to this is to adore myself, and I cannot. A haiku for Fremlin:

the snap of my back

bleached out bones that compose me

domesticated

Oh, Valentine's day, how you mock and pester me. Materialistic, plasticine campaign to inform those-who-stir-in-the-night-at-the-sounds-of-leaves-through-trees that we are all, finally alone.

 

Alone and crumbling to ash.