Catnap

The small darkness finds its way to me,
nestling into the crook of one arm,
the littlest of spoons.

She comes when called sometimes,
or else when she feels like it,
circling and settling,
filling the vacuum of a body at rest
or the brief yawning spaces
between my wife’s pillow and mine.
Together we negotiate the gift
of her grey familiar weight,
sprawled and inconvenient
and welcomed all the same.

I know we are lucky, to have arrived
at this mutual understanding—
that the wild predators of the future
will not all be so willingly tamed.
But this one lays alongside me
for a lingering moment:
both of us asleep and in motion,
tiny hearts racing,
limbs twitching,
half-submerged in void.

May we rest awhile
before we start awake
and resume our common prowl.

Started June 2023
Finished July 12, 2023 (on an airplane, after not seeing our cat Sadie for several weeks)
…posted today because I felt like it 🐈‍⬛