Claws click on my hardwood
Thump
A petite beast lands on my bed
She stalks over ruffled blankets and
Yesterdays sweater
Tentative paws
Test the certainty of my torso
7 purring pounds keep me company
Kneading paws
Dazzling eyes like emeralds
Fur softer than soft
Lounging on my belly for the nth time
She bestows upon me the peace of her closeness

Just when it’s all falling down
And I’m tumbling with it
When the sunrise looks grey
And the tree branches too spindly
When I’m nearly tugged under the waters of my melancholy
Into the currents of despair
I eat a bit of aged cheese
And it speaks to me in the language of pleasure and nuance
It holds my tongue
A deep, floral, aromatic effervescence
Smooths out the wrinkles of my being
And it’s alright
A light starts on my tastebuds
And expands to my body
And then even the tree branches respond
Now elegant like ballerinas
The sunrise coaxed into a more vibrant peach
Reflecting on the windows of the apartments across the way

the immunotherapy it seems is not working
the CT scan results had some "big brain words" as my dad called them
he showed me his phone
not looking too closely at the words as he passed it my way
he's smart enough and so am I
"residual/recurrent tumor"
"enlarged"
"narrowing of the luminal space"
we know what this means

the tumor grows still
squeezing that space where food wants to go
making the tube
that protrudes
from his waist so necessary

brown slop full of minerals and vitamins and calories
poured into the tube by his loved ones
so vulnerable
so bare as he lifts his shirt to be fed
by a daughter 50 years younger than he

his skin so dry and sagging
once inflated by muscle and a bit of fat
now clings to his bones

the skin is pink around the tube
and wet
raw where the tape is ripped up 4 times a day
we keep a bandage there
it hurts when he showers and he flinches if I accidentally jostle it while inserting the syringe

to make your aging, dying, thinning father flinch
is a pain I want no one to know
but how many countless women have cared for their aging fathers
in this way?

I didn't ask to be a nurse

Since he showed me the damning results
black letters on a white screen
I've avoided him
I don't want to talk about it
What other option is there?

Maybe the drug administrators at John Hopkins
will think of something new
Maybe he can go back on the other immunotherapy
my mother seems to think was working best.

I can picture the tumor
so resilient and pink
ripe with blood vessels
new thick flesh
cuddled there inside the esophagus
gatekeeping saliva
from entering the stomach
so he has to spit it back up
walks around all day with a little cup for the saliva he cannot swallow
food he can't swallow
and because he refuses to chew and spit out delicious foods as I've suggested we do together
he doesn't even taste
the only thing he tastes
is burps
that rise with chemical gusto to push through the tumor's gates
"that stuff is nasty"
he says with emphasis
"hardly people food"
he says with disgust
Now I mix his goo with strawberry or banana smoothie
to make the suffering a bit less
hoping he isn't assaulted with nasty burps from the goo
that entered his stomach
through the tube

I see how death roils around you
How it looms and tickles your space
How its tendrils hang around you like
The reapers cloak on a wind

In the night your demons come to dream with me
I don’t know why they come
But they show me the way they have filled you
For so long
How they have lived in your husk
And now that husk is not so habitable
Now that husk doesn’t have the energy to sustain them
They can’t feed from you how they once did
Now that you can’t feed yourself
Now that you must be fed
Through a tube from the hands of your wife
So on their way out
Your demons, your company, the spirits you’ve channeled for many many years
Come to your daughter
To reveal themselves in the night

One so sick and strange
So small with oily hair mother never took the time to wash
A forsaken child beaming at the attention I give her
To lift her from your body and put her in your bed
I listen to her sounds and animations
And she goes into a soft sleep

Another so bold and mean
Large and angry
Cold and resounding and sure
This beast was inside you all these years
Shape shifting you to yell at your babies
In a booming voice
With out kindness or remorse

Who will I meet next?
Who will leave you next?
Will I meet the last when you are on your death bed?
Or will they leave you and then by some miracle your body will start to work?

Who are you without them?
Do you know?

Today, my mom and I obsessed over my kitten's beauty:
"she's so precious"
"mirala come se pone asi"
"a work of art"
"her eyes are BEAUTIFUL"
"un modelo"
"preciosa"
resounding in the air around her
as she tore at the rug by the door with sharp claws
motivated by each word of praise wafting around her.
Then I said:
"I think she could have been a show cat, but her personality won't allow it"
and then mom got busy with her breakfast
and I had some space for my thoughts
Sometimes, when I notice something new about my cat
I wonder what this new knowledge
Can tell me about myself.
I think I am just the same as her
I could have been a show girl, a show something, a trophy wife, or by now a print model getting botox to fend off the aging that tugs on my laugh lines
But my personality, won't allow it.
Too sensitive, too knowing for that 'could have been' that's not for me.
Too disregulating to my nervous system to be beautiful and voiceless.
Again, again, again, again
Thousands of times in this mind I contemplate myself
As if I am constantly being beheld by a thousand eyes who will judge my value as a thing of beauty
Will that ever end?
I don't think so and I suppose it's something to accept.
That's being a woman in this life isn't it?
Being a cat, always beheld.
Or who cares if it's being a woman or a cat.
It's a distinct part of my psyche to be beheld.
Just like it's an integral part of my cats life to be beheld and praised as she tears up a vintage rug.

I used to confess
Confess myself all the time
Confessing parts of my personality
Disowning myself
While playing the martyr to my flaws

I don’t do this anymore
Suddenly
After years of work on my inner walls
I hear my no’s and yes’s clearly
I respond to them shortly thereafter
And I no longer  confess
That I’m very sensitive
That I have a past with trauma and pain
That I have unique needs

Part of this is knowing I’m not alone
We’re all sensitive
We all have pain
We all have unique needs

My favorite poets
Are the ones who don’t know it
The pedestrian texts
From people who love
Who’s love has made them artists