My favorite cat is very sick
I did, I spent, to find out what is wrong
to help him, my heart is breaking and I walk,
hike around Briones Park, even though I haven't hiked in over two months
and the hills are steep and the anxiety is great and I take quarter pills of clonozipan
along the way as I finally get the courage to call the vet for the lab results
just like last year when I walked three hours before I could stand to call and it was worse
and I know now and walked on, finished all those clonozipan and made it up the steepest hills
adrenaline driving me and I have no more money and I could mess around at the loan place
but finally I get the courage, as usual, at the end of the four hours, to call you
and there is the first shred of concern and then the deluge and you are hurling accusations
at me and this is the price I pay always for your help and I know I am not perfect
and I know I must live within my means but my cat,
I begin to cry and sit down on the mountain side, a child again
and you lash into me, for my huge problem with cruel words that make my psyche bleed and
you remind me so much of my X husband, as I sit and cry and hikers and joggers go by
and you make your point but that is not enough, you must drive the dagger deep
deep into my sternum and twist it around until I am reeling and bash my head
against granite and I know I will be reeling from this conversation for days and why,
why couldn't you ever have this passion against the people who hurt me, at this job,
in my marriage, why did they get such respect and peace when I am bashed against the rocks, blood in my eyes, salt water stings, tangled in seaweed and a wave crashes over me
please stop I beg you.  stop.  you don't have to be so cruel
which makes you angrier and the angriest you ever have been in my life has been
over money, why, such a Jew?  Like your mother, like my X.  This has taken on a meaning
as I drift away from the conversation as one does when pain is so intolerable that the body shuts it out and dissassociates, and I am up high floating now above the city below
an ironicly beautiful landscape and you lie, yes father, you lie and say you are
struggling in your million dollar home with season Opera tickets and trips all over the world
and I think, I feel so at home, just like my X, so much like my X.
And yet, I am changing and a  voice inside me, drunk now from being knocked in the head, I tell you to stop, that this is not the best way to talk about this as I did
to that guy I rejected who hurt me, and my boss, and I feel, I am changing
and I will fight for what I value, what I love
and on the way home, tears in my eyes, I buy the medication to keep my cat more comfortable and he responds and I think, this is worth it
I am worth it, and you father, may never change, but I can
and I can change most importantly, my opinion of you