Cat Poem: For Sage, Who Has No End

“The hard part’s over now,” they said when it came time to say goodbye. The hard part? I thought with one last look at your gray fur on your sweet head. Oh, no. The hard part? That’s what’s starting now.

The hard part is the silence. The emptiness in my lap. The hard part is the space between what was “you” and what is “now.” 

That is the hard part. Counting the days the way I used to count your breaths, wondering when it would happen. Wondering how.

It’s easy to make the choice between pain and goodbye. The hard part? That’s what comes after. 

Twelve years went by fast, but no matter how many years we had, it would never be enough. So I won’t measure us by time.

Instead, I’ll measure our lives by the details. The softness of your fur, the strength of your purr, the warmth of your body stretched against mine. 

I’ll measure our lives by our victories. The time that we stole. The places we called home. The days that we owned. Because you might have been sick, but you did not lose. You were strong, you were brave, you were triumphant. 

But what happens now? What happens to the parts of you not made of atoms? How will I know the tiny pieces of your soul when I meet them again? 

If time is an illusion then somewhere in the past you’re still whole. I don’t want to grow away from that whole. I don’t want space to stretch across time and separate this present from the ones that we share somewhere back there. 

I don’t want to feel better, I want to feel sad. I want to grieve and know that it’s my love for you, changed in form, but strong as ever.

Will you stay with me in my mind? Will you come with me as the present moves through time?

Or do you want to go free? Leave me with love and our memories and find a place that’s empty? A place of your own that you can fill with little pieces of you until it’s whole, but unburdened, something new? 

Whatever it is, I want that for you. 

But maybe the smallest piece of you could stay with me. I’ll store it in the backyard, I’ll bury you with seeds. I’ll look out the window at the dirt and the green leaves and I’ll think of you every time, my sweet best friend. It’ll be a new beginning, one that you’re a part of, proof that you, and love, can have no end.