Sleepless Cats Lie
Kara tells me she wakes each morning
to strike the alarm clock and holler, "Fuck!"
But I wake to the harsher sounds of my cat:
her insistent murmuring beneath the door
and a relentless scratching, percussive
against the soft wood.
Sometimes, I know,
even before that sound I wake—roll over
heavily, sigh—and only then the cat hears,
and she responds
at three-thirty this morning,
or yesterday at four o'clock. In the living room,
unsteady still, I hold the darkness and remains
of sleep just two breaths longer.
Day's sun
will sketch like sudden wind across these lines
of fresh charcoal, dusting this dust.
Daisy purrs
and I lift her up, reaching
only now for light. She stretches, trying
to find me here, so I lean low, putting
my face to hers, our whiskers touching.