he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough

one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.

"you can make it," I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.

you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...

and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"

but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"

"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"

I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...

it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.

he too knows it's ******* but that somehow it all helps.

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.  Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green **** hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

let me reiterate
that the fish was not just a fish.
it wasn't even about the fish.
if you could see through his scales
the parasitic, plaguing fish
the fishy, foiled, murky eyes
and the five beautiful hooks
hanging in his lip, scarred into his being
you would see yourself
and pain and baggage and acceptance
begging, abandonment, pain, freedom.
facets. scaled facets reflecting in the sunlight.
it was never about the **** fish.

Hi.
I miss you.
Please come home.
I love you.

It's hard not to be able to share my fondest memory.
Lying in bed and just holding each other.
It was something beautiful. You were something beautiful.
Your beautiful dark eyes and strong hands and kind smile
gave me chills.
It didn't even take anything. You didn't have to do anything
special. It didn't matter.
Laughing, talking, smiling, nothing. Anything. Everything.
I loved you. I loved you so hard.
I loved when you brushed your lips across my cheek
and teased
oh, how you teased.
Because I wanted every inch of you.
And I loved when you drifted in and out of sleep
and breathed deeper, and laughed slower
and that you didn't mind
when I did the same.
And when I told you something from the hardness of my heart
where hard brick walls protect my (persistent, ugly) demons
you just held me tighter.
I've never felt so safe.
I loved that.
And when it was over, when the sun was rising quickly
and dim light was creeping in to greet us
"Good morning, secret lovers, you've made it!"
there was an electricity in our knowledge of each other.
No one knew how we knew each other that night.
No one knows
what beauty, terror, intimacy
looked like, between the two of us.
It's hard to put that memory away
when all I want to do is scream.
It's hard to wake up and say
"I am going to be happy today"
when my happy is tucked in with us.
It's just so hard.

that girl you see? with the big blue eyes?
she's in the middle of a war with herself.
she was known as the girl who went in her car everyday for lunch simply to write.
you see her?
she's the girl who holds a mask in front of her face
and if you were to look behind it
you would be shocked.
that girl, that girl loves .
she L O V E S.
and if she loves you
then ****, you have got to be something special.
that girl is the one with depression and anxiety.
who has dealt with things you wouldn't even imagine.
she's that girl with the love for life
despite the fact that life has tried to turn her dark and grey.
that girl shines
that girl shines colors you've never seen before.
that girl is the one who is messy and unorganized but it's okay with her.
she's the girl with an ordinary face, but an extraordinary heart.
she's that girl that will apologize for the mess after you rip her to shreds.
that girl has a strange love for bears and the outdoors.
and has dreamt of the mountains all of her life.
she's from the small town where she was being swallowed.
and trust?
trust is not something that girl can do easily.
she has walls so strong that you wouldn't believe.
with a never ending for stargazing
because it reminds her each night that there is beauty everywhere
even if it is hidden sometimes.

yeah. that girl.

Handle me gently.
Mull it over in your mind
Until you find the words that match your intentions.
Say them quietly
So only I can hear.
Don't speak harshly.
Don't leave me hanging.
Don't blend into the background.
A word spoken is a word meant
So say what you mean
Because I meant what I said
And I'll say it again.
I love you times one million.
All my bad decisions were worth it
If my one right decision was you.